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Stories of the Nations 

A Series of Historical Studies intended to present in 
graphic narratives the stories of the different 
nations that have attained prominence in history. 



In the story form the current of each national 
life is distinctly indicated, and its picturesque and 
noteworthy periods and episodes are presented for 
the reader in their philosophical relations to each 
other as well as to universal history. 



12°, Illustrated, cloth, each . . $1.50 
Half Leather, each .... $1.75 
Nos. 62 and following Nos. . net $1.35 
Each .... (By mail) $1.50 
Half leather, gilt top, each . net $1.60 

(By mail) $1.75 



FOR FULL LIST OF WORKS SEE END OF THIS VOLUME 






WALES 







^ 



THE STORY OF THE NATIONS 



WALES 



BY 
OWEN M. EDWARDS 

FELIOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD 






NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN 
1902 






a • • 



e c -c 







PREFACE 



In this first attempt at writing a continuous 
popular history of Wales, I am afraid that the mass 
of details tends to obscure the outlines of the story 
of a very simple and definite development. 

In the first half I try to sketch the rise and fall of 
a princely caste ; in the se'cond, the rise of a self- 
educated, self-governing peasantry. Rome left its 
heritage of political unity and organisation to a 
Welsh governing tribal caste ; the princes were 
alternately the oppressing organisers of their own 
people and their defenders against England. The 
literature of the princes are the courtly tales of the 
Mabinogion and the exquisitely artistic odes of 
Davydd ap Gwilym and his contemporaries. The 
princes were crushed by the Plantagenets, their 
descendants dispossessed by the Lancastrians or 
Anglicised by the Tudors. On their disappearance, 
a lower subject class became prominent, inheriting 
their changing traditions, and feebly imitating their 
decaying literature. This class, with stronger thought 
and increasing material wealth, rules Wales to-day. 



IV PREFACE 

The history of the period of the formation of the 
Welsh people, which Principal Rhys has made his 
own, I pass over very lightly. Of early social history, 
expounded to English readers by Mr. Seebohm, I 
only relate enough to make political history in- 
telligible. My chief authorities for the period of the 
Norman and English conquests, which I sketch 
more fully, are Brut y Tywysogion, Ordericus Vitalis, 
the monastic annalists, the Welsh laws, and the 
Welsh poets of the Red Book of Hergest. For each 
period from the time of Owen Glendower to the 
present day, my conclusions are mostly drawn from 
contemporary Welsh literature. With regard to the 
vast mass of unpublished material, I have found 
invaluable guidance in Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans' 
transcripts and catalogues. 

In almost every case I have given proper names 
in their Anglicised form. Words like Owen and 
Llywelyn present no difficulty ; but ought I to have 
written Rees or Rhys, Griffith or Gruffydd? The 
English form is given in the text ; the Welsh correct 
forms will be found in brackets in the index. 

OWEN M. EDWARDS. 
Llanuwchllyn, 

March, 1901. 



CONTENTS 



A Land of Mountains 

A mass of mountains rising between plain and sea — They 
explain a story of independence and disunion — Their four 
divisions : precipitous Eryri, Berwyn pasture lands and 
sheep walks, Plinlimmon moorlands, Black Mountains shel- 
tering pleasant plains and hiding a vast coal-field — The four 
divisions correspond roughly with four nations and four 
dioceses. 

The migrating nations that reached the mountains that 
stood almost on the edge of the world then known — A short 
dark race, which we may call Iberian ; the Celtic race, tall 
and fair — Traditions concerning the struggle between them — 
They are still the chief elements of the Welsh people. 



PAGE 

I-17 



II. 



Rome and Arthur (84-681) 



18-30 



Rome stops the migration of nations westwards — Ostorius 
Scapula approaches the mountains, and defeats the Silurian 
army of Caratacus — Suetonius Paulinus and Julius Frontinus 
carry the Roman eagles to the western sea — The political 
settlement under Agricola — Great military camps and cities 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

on the skirts of the mountains — Rule of kinglets subject to 
the chief Roman official — The defence against the Picts in 
the north and against the pirates of the western sea. 

The persistence of Roman ideals in the mountains after 
the fall of Rome — The idea of political unity finds expression 
in the supremacy of Maelgwn Gwynedd, in the struggle 
between Cadwallon and Northumbria, and in the gradual 
evolution of the mystic Arthur of legend — The old religion 
and St. David. 



III. 

The Welsh Kings (681-1063) • • • 31-43 

The attempts of the Welsh kings at continuing the political 
unity represented by Rome and Arthur — Their difficulties : 
the independence of their princes, the English attacks from 
the plains, the Danish attacks from the sea. 

The attempt of Rhodri the Great — The Danish attack — 
Disruption of Rhodri's kingdom — The greatness of Mercia 
under Ofifa— The Laws of Howel the Good. 

The attempt of Llywelyn ap Seisyll — The battle of 
Aber Gwili — Prosperity — On Llywelyn's death, in 1022, the 
Danes came, and anarchy. 

The attempt of Griffith ap Llywelyn — Battles of Rhyd 
y Groes and Pencader — Alliance with Mercia — The struggle 
between Griffith and Harold of England. 



IV. 

The Norman Conquest (1063- 1094) . . 45-60 

The struggle between Griffith's sons and Harold's nominee 
Bleddyn — The appearance of William the Conqueror at 
Chester — Bleddyn joins Mercia in opposing the Normans 
— Effects of the Norman conquest of England on Wales — 
The Norman advance into Wales : from Chester, Shrews- 
bury, and Hereford. 

Hugh the Wolf at Chester— The advance of Norman 
Robert to Rhuddlan and Deganwy — Roger of Montgomery 



CONTENTS VI 1 

PAGE 

at Shrewsbury — William FitzOsbern at Hereford — Helpless- 
ness and death of Bleddyn. 

Appearance of the two opponents of the Normans: 
Griffith ap Conan and Rees ap Tudor : of the royal line of 
Wales — Battle of Mynydd Cam — William the Conqueror 
comes to pray to St. David's — Bernard of Neufmarche at 
Talgarth — Death of Rees and captivity of Griffith — Rapid 
extension of the Norman conquest : Hugh of Chester in 
Mon, Roger of Montgomery and his sons in Dyved, 
Bernard at Maesyved, FitzHamon in Morgannwg. 



The Work of Griffith ap Conan (1094-1137) . 63-80 

Re-appearance of Griffith ap Conan — The recovery of Mon — 
The end of Robert of Rhuddlan — The revolt of Dyved and 
Powys against the Normans under Cadogan ap Bleddyn— 
The Red King of England in Wales — The end of Hugh of 
Montgomery and of Hugh of Chester. 

Robert of Belesme aims at independence in Shrewsbury 
— His alliance with the sons of Bleddyn— Henry I. crushes 
his power — Henry's treacherous dealings with the sons of 
Bleddyn. 

Owen of Powys appeals to Welsh patriotism — His 
defiance of Henry, submission, and allegiance — His end — 
His place taken by Griffith ap Rees— Death of Gwenllian— 
Battle of Cardigan — End of Griffith ap Conan— Limits of 
Norman conquest. 



VI. 

The Age of Owen Gwynedd (1137-1194) . 81-104 

The supremacy of Gwynedd— Owen's difficulties— The first 
attack by Henry II.— The second attempt of Henry II.— 
The united Welsh army at Corwen— Owen's peace policy. 
The Lord Rees, the chief ally of Owen Gwynedd, 



VlU CONTENTS 

PAGE 

continues Owen's policy — Relations with Henry II. — First 
conquest of Ireland — Rees' power. 

Rees' neighbours : (i) The Clares in Dyved and Ceredi- 
gion ; (2) William of Gloucester in Glamorgan ; {3) William 
de Braose at Abergavenny ; {4) The Mortimers at Wigmore ; 
(5) Owen Cyveiliog in Upper Powys ; (6) Griffith Maelor in 
Lower Powys ; (7) Hugh Cyveiliog at Chester ; (8) Davydd 
ab Owen in Gwynedd. 

Rees' Eisteddvod — The literary awakening. 



VII. 

A Journey Round Mediaeval Wales (ii88) . 105-126 

Archbishop Baldwin and Gerald the Welshman in Wales — 
They meet the Lord Rees and his sons, the Welsh bishops and 
abbots, the sons of Owen Gwynedd, and Griffith Maelor — 
Owen Cyveiliog did not come. 

Superstitions of Powys and Brycheiniog — Anecdotes ot 
Glamorgan history — Battlefields of Henry 11. — A Welsh 
home — National characteristics. 

Gerald becomes the champion of the independence of 
the Welsh Church, 1 198-1204 — The meaning of the struggle, 
and its results. 



VIH. 

Llywelyn the Great (i 194-1240) . . . 1 27-151 

Alliance with the English John broken, and followed by war 
— Union of the Welsh chiefs — Alliance with the English 
barons — Magna Carta — The council of Aberdovey. 

Relations with the princes of South Wales and,Powys — 
With the families of Braose and Mortimer and the earl of 
Chester — With the Marshalls and other ministers of 
Henry 11. 

Rapidity of movements, belief in sacredness of com- 
pacts, love of diplomacy, unity finding expression in 
council of chiefs — His aim was peace — The greatness of 
Llywelyn's ideals : a united, prosperous Wales as part of a 
British feudal system — The importance of his personality. 



CONTENTS IX 

PAGE 

IX. 

The Fate of Llywelyn's Ideals (1240-12 7 2) . 153-172 

Llywelyn's two sons, Davydd and Griffith — Davydd the heir 
of Llywelyn's policy ; Griffith its opponent — The brothers 
and Henry III. — Davydd's despair and death. 

Two rival claimants, Llywelyn, son of Griffith ; Edward, 
son of Henry III. — Edward's unpopularity and difficulties — 
Llywelyn revives the power of Llywelyn the Great — Alliance 
with Simon de Montfort and Gilbert de Clare— The Barons' 
War— The Treaty of Montgomery — A new struggle in- 
evitable — Llywelyn's ideals impossible. 



X. 

The Last Fight for Independence (i 272-1 284) 173-194 

Edward I. summons Llywelyn to Chester — The capture of 
Eleanor de Montfort — The first war — The Treaty of 
Rhuddlan — Llywelyn's marriage. 

Arrogance of English officials— Discontent of Davydd 
—Grievances of the Church — Disputes about the treaty — 
The second war — Death of Eleanor— Peckham's mediation — 
Battle of Moel y Don — Fall of Llywelyn — Snowdon 
conquered — Trial of Davydd. 



XL 
The Will of the Conqueror (1284-1301) . 195-217 

The " Statute of Wales " ordained at Rhuddlan— Llywelyn's 
principality becomes six shires : Anglesey, Carnarvon, 
Merioneth, Flint, Cardigan, and Carmarthen — Snowdon 
surrounded by castles— The rise of chartered boroughs— 
The great fringe of lordships, under Lacy, the Mortimers, 
Bohun, Hastings, Clare, and Valence— Welsh discontent- 
Revolts — The new Prince of Wales born at Carnarvon — The 
crown of Arthur, and the Nevin tournament — The Welsh 
mercenaries. 



CONTENTS 



XII. 

An English Prince of Wales (1301-1327) . 218-235 

The popularity of Edward II. in Wales — He regarded 
himself as a Welshman — His ordinances were just — He 
summoned Welshmen to Parliament — He was the protector 
of his subjects against royal official and lord marcher alike, 
except where the interests of his favourites came in. 

Roger Mortimer his chief enemy — The death of Gilbert 
de Clare at Bannockburn placed Glamorgan in the gift of 
the king — Its administration by Turberville, and the revolt 
of Llywelyn Bren — Granted to Despenser — The hatred 
between Despenser and Mortimer. 

Disaffection in North Wales — The revolt of Griffith 
Lloyd also caused by a Mortimer — The king in Wales as 
a deliverer and protector — The flight of Mortimer — The 
king alienates his subjects by favouritism — Hawys of Powys 
— Return of Mortimer — Edward flees to Wales. 



XIII. 

The Longbow and the Black Death (1327- 

1350) 236-247 

The coronation of the Black Prince as Prince of Wales — 
His army of Welsh bowmen — The home of the longbow in 
Gwent— Its introduction into the English army— The Welsh 
bowmen at Cressy, Agincourt, &c. — Welsh adventurers on the 
French side— Owen of Wales— The advantages of a soldier's 
life — Its disintegrating influence on mediaeval society. 

The Black Death— It precipitated a great development : 
the emancipation of the serf— The stages in the development 
of the freedom of the Welsh serf. 



XIV. 
The Rule of the Lords (1350-1400) . . 249-260 

The confusion of a period of disintegration — Discontent of 
the serf, who had prospered, and of the freeman, who had 
been abased — Transition from chief of tribal communities to 



CONTENTS XI 

PAGE 

owner of land — Tyranny of lords : Grey of Ruthin, Fitzalan, 
John Charlton, Roger Mortimer, Henry Bolingbroke — The 
peasants look to the king for protection — The dragon 
standard — Popularity of Richard II. — Weakness of Henry 
IV. — Prosperity: Growth of towns, which gradually cease 
to be hostile garrisons. 

XV. 
Bard, Friar, Lollard (i 350-1400). . . 261-268 

The literary awakening — Delight in beauty, condemned by 
the friar, made by the poet into a kind of religion — Mary 
taken from the P^anciscans and humanised — Her flowers — 
The bard the representative of naturalness and patriotism — 
Bard and friar's denunciations of each other— The struggle 
between them stopped by the outbreak of war. 

The Welsh Lollard has the old earnestness of the friar, 
the mystic touch of the bard — Bard, friar, and Lollard bound 
together by patriotism. 

XVI. 
Owen Glendower (1400-1415) . . . 269-287 

Welcomed by all as their champion against the lords — By 
freeman, bard, friar, labourer, student — The burning of 
Ruthin the signal for universal revolt — 1401, guerilla war — 
1402, a national war — 1403, alliance with the Mortimers — 
1404, Owen supreme in Wales, with a Parliament — His 
relations with France and the Papacy. 

Owen's political ideals : an independent Wales, under 
prince and parliament ; an independent church, with St. 
David's as its metropolitan see ; the organisation of the 
new learning by means of Welsh universities — His mysterious 
personality — A proof of his greatness. 

XVII. 

Mortimer and Tudor (1415-1485) . . 288-301 

Two Welsh families, Mortimer and Tudor, rivals for the 
English throne — Princes of Wales : Henry, afterwards 

I* 



XU CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Henry V. ; Edward, son of Henry VI. ; Edward, afterwards 
Edward V. ; Edward, son of Richard HI. 

Flight of Queen Margaret and Prince Edward to 
Harlech — Battle of Mortimer's Cross, and death of Owen 
Tudor — The Welsh Lancastrian archers at Towton — The 
Welsh Yorkists at Edgecote — Flight of Henry Tudor after 
Tewkesbury. 

The Yorkist rule — The court of the Prince of Wales at 
Ludlow — Growing unpopularity of Richard HL — Revolt of 
Buckingham — Plot of Lady Margaret Tudor and Elizabeth 
of York — Henry Tudor lands near Haverfordwest — The 
march through Wales — The battle of Bosworth. 



xvni. 

The End of the Old Days (1485-1535) . 303-309 

Dragon sovereigns, what they gave, and what they took. 

The end of religious enthusiasm— The Lollard dis- 
appears — Bard and monk agree. 

The decline of Welsh literature — The loss of natural- 
ness — The tyranny of eisteddvodau — The rise of alliteration 
— A barren period between the mediaeval literature of the 
prince, and the modern literature of the peasants. 

The decline of the chief: ceases to be a patron of 
literature ; his character degenerates ; the self-sacrificing 
lord of kin becomes a grasping lord of land — Sir Rees ap 
Thomas. 

XIX. 

The New Shires (1535-1542). . . . 310-320 

Thomas Cromwell's policy of consolidation — "The Act of 
Union " of 1535 — The march lordships become new shires : 
Denbigh, Montgomery, Radnor, Brecknock, and Monmouth 
— Completion of the shires of Glamorgan and Pembroke — 
Lordships added to the older English and Welsh shires — 
Comparison of the older and newer units of administra- 
tion — The boundary of England and Wales — Wales repre- 
sented in Parliament. 



CONTENTS xiii 

XX. 

The Court of Wales (1535-1542) . . .321-329 

Rees ap Griffith and Lord Ferrers in the Star Chamber- 
Germ of the Court in Yorkist times— An offshoot of the Star 
Chamber in Wales— The energy of Bishop Lee as president 
—A successful illiterate Welshman— The Court of Wales 
presided over by Sir Henry Sidney— The Countess of 
Pembroke— Cause of Welsh litigiousness— Cause of the 
decline of the Court. 

XXL 

The Great Sessions (1542-1830) . . . 330-337 

The new local government and system of justice — Great 
importance of local government for Wales— Great and Petty 
Sessions— Two judges : Bradshaw and Jeffreys— The justices 
of the peace— Shire, hundred, parish — Lawlessness — The 
Red Banditti of Mawddwy — The new government not an 
unmixed blessing — Unwise dislike of Welsh patriotism — 
Useless prohibition of the use of the Welsh language- 
Jealousy between governing class and governed — Evils of 
primogeniture. 

XXII. 

An Unwelcome Reformation (i 535-1588) . 339-353 

The passive resistance to the Reformation— Thomas Crom- 
well's agents— Bishop Barlow and Ellis Price— The hunt for 
relics— The end of Dervel Gadarn— The rifling of the 
monasteries— The pitiful state of the Welsh Church. 

Voices on its behalf— The intemperate zeal of John 
Penry — The great labour of William Morgan— The self- 
sacrifice of the Welsh Jesuits— 1588, the Welsh Bible- 
Why the Jesuits failed. 

XXIIL 

Blind Loyalty (i 588-1 649) .... 354-373 

The loyalty of the gentry, who were followed blindly by the 
people— John Williams, the wise adviser of James I. and 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Charles I. — The politics of Welsh members of the Long 
Parliament — Lord Herbert's treasure — The king appeals to 
Welsh loyalty — The battle of Edgehill, 1642 — The slaughter 
at Highnam and Nantwich in 1643 — Archbishop Williams' 
despair in 1644 — The king successful in Wales in 1645, but 
his hopes crushed by the great defeat at Naseby — The dis- 
affection in South Wales — The fall of Bristol — The defence 
of Chester — Chester falls in 1646 — Harlech surrendered in 
1647. 

The Second Civil War — Wales united for the king — 
The battle of St. Fagans — The siege of Pembroke ; its 
importance — The national character of the Second Civil 
War. 



XXIV. 

The Rule of the Puritan and the Whig 

(1649-1730) 375-385 

Two ideals, to be united after many days. 

The share of Wales in the Commonwealth — Represen- 
tation in Parliament — John Jones, Sergeant Glyn, Philip 
Jones, Algernon Sidney — Their work and its fate. 

Harrison and Vavasor Powel — Morgan Llwyd as the 
voice of Welsh Puritanism — What disappeared with the 
Commonwealth, and what remained. 

Welsh lawyers of the period of the Restoration— Ellis 
Wynn's hell and Theophilus Evans' patriotism — The 
apathy at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 



XXV. 

The Awakening (i 730-1832) .... 386-392 

Griffith Jones of Llanddowror and his circulating schools — 
Opposition to revolutionary theories — lolo Morgannwg — The 
voice of Howel Harris— The religious awakening— Williams 
Pant y Celyn — A national Sunday School— The literary 
awakening — Goronwy Owen and Lewis Morris — The 
national Eisteddvod— The importance of the period. 



CONTENTS XV 

PAGE 

XXVI. 

The Industrial Revolution (1832-1894) . 395-401 

The Reform Acts and the growing interest in party politics 
— The industrial revolution — The changed face of the 
country — The growth of Cardiff — The development of 
local government — Activity and efficiency of the local 
councils — Development of education : primary, secondary, 
higher — The University of Wales, 1894. 

XXVII. 

Conclusion 403-404 

National feeling and imperial sympathies — Conservatism 
and energy — The Welshman as a colonist — " Ich dien." 

Index 405 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



CARNARVON CASTLE 

CADER IDRIS .... 

A GLIMPSE OF SNOWDON . 

A TYPICAL WELSH FACE 

"the ROMAN steps" IN ARDUDWY 

IN THE LAND OF THE FREE . 

RHUDDLAN CASTLE. 

A bird's-eye view OF KIDWELLY CASTLE 

ABERDARON CHURCH 

DOOR OF ABERDARON CHURCH 

CORWEN AND THE VALLEY OF THE DEE . 

CHEPSTOW CASTLE AND THE WYE 

RUINS OF LLANTHONY ABBEY 

BANGOR CATHEDRAL . 

STONE COFFIN OF LLYWELYN THE GREAT . 

CRICCIETH CASTLE 

ON THE MENAI .... 

THE LAST HOME OF WELSH INDEPENDENCE 

CONWAY CASTLE .... 

EAGLE TOWER, CARNARVON CASTLE 

HARLECH CASTLE .... 

THE RUINS OF DENBIGH CASTLE 

CAERPHILLY CASTLE 

GATEWAY OF ST. QUENTIN'S CASTLE . 



Frontispiece 

PAGE 

I 

4 

II 

25 

• 36 
44 

. 58 
62 

. 75 
90 

• 95 
III 

. 122 
144 

• 152 
174 

. 190 
196 

. 200 
206 

. 220 
228 

. 248 



XVlll 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

FLINT CASTLE ..... 256 

VALLE CRUCIS . . . . . . 270 

RUINS OF ABERYSTWYTH CASTLE . . . 280 

HARLECH CASTLE . . . . . 290 

TO THE MEMORY OF TUDUR ALED AND OTHERS . 302 

CADER IDRIS . . • . • 316 

CAREW CASTLE. ..... 324 

bird's-eye VIEW OF ST. DAVID's CATHEDRAL . 338 

THE RUINS OF NEATH ABBEY .... 344 

GATEWAY OF EPISCOPAL PALACE, LLANDAFF . 35 1 

JOHN WILLIAMS ..... 356 

RAGLAN CASTLE ..... 358 

CONWAY CASTLE . . . . • 362 

CHIRK CASTLE ..... 366 

PEMBROKE TOWN AND CASTLE . . '370 

LLANRWST BRIDGE ..... 374 

ON THE EDGE OF THE GREAT COAL BED . . 382 

THE ARAN OVER BALA LAKE . . . 388 
NEWPORT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . -392 

NANT Y GLO ..... 394 

A CORNER OF BLAENAU FFESTINIOG . . . 396 

THE OLD AND THE NEW .... 398 

MENAI BRIDGE. ..... 402 



MAPS. 

CYMRU ..... 

THE CYMRY . . . • 

ROMAN WALES .... 

WALES DURING THE NORMAN CONQUEST 
WALES AFTER THE CONQUEST BY EDWARD I, 
WALES IN THE TIME OF OWEN GLENDOWER 
WALES AFTER TUDOR TIMES 



2 

i5 

23 

61 

203 

273 

392 




CAQER IDRIS. 

{From a drawing by Captain Batty.) 



A LAND OF MOUNTAINS 



Wales is a land of mountains. Its mountains 
explain its isolation and its love of independence ; 
they explain its internal divisions ; they have deter- 
mined, throughout its history, what the direction and 
method of its progress were to be. 

The mountains of Wales rise between the sea and 
the comparatively flat lands of the south of Britain, a 
curved line of summits some one hundred and fifty 
miles long, running from north to south. Two rivers 
skirt their bases on the east or land side — the Dee 

2 



CYMRU 
(WALES) 

English Miles 



The Jiortion u/i/^in Ae famt c/ofted Imt 
IS onr soo feet ^ijA The figures 

Otrt /^t AeiqAf of Tnountains in fe 
Pie fiorf'ion tvif/iin //le f>tay/7y dotted 

oyer /ioo feet 77it farts aSofc 
iioo feet are itacA j. 




SNO WDON 3 

flowinof northwards and the Severn southwards — both 
flowing to the western sea. The valley of the Severn 
separates the Welsh hills from those of Devon and 
Cornwall, the valley of the Dee separates them from 
those of the north of England. 

Four summits, each neighbour dimly visible from 
the other, may be selected as resting points while 
taking a bird's-eye view of the country, called by its 
inhabitants Cymru — " the land of brothers " ; and by 
others Wales — " the land of strangers." 

Snowdon, one of the highest peaks in Eryri — the 
old " home of eagles " — rises high above most of its 
numerous fellows in the north. Immediately around 
it lie the romantic glens and slopes of Arvon, hiding 
a wealth of blue slate. To the north-west the isle of 
Mon lies placidly at Snowdon's feet, its copper hills 
rising slightly above the moors and meadows, whose 
fertility once won for her the name of " the mother of 
Wales." To the south-west a line of serrated hills, 
running far into the sea, forms the promontory of 
Eivion and Lleyn — the land of gigantic fortresses 
and weird lonely peaks. Eastwards, beyond the 
short and narrow valley of the Conway, lie the green 
limestone hills of Denbigh ; and beyond them lie the 
iron and lead hills of Flint, shading off into the 
distant vale of Maelor. Southwards a mountainous 
ridge runs, displaying precipitous rocky slopes 
towards the west and the sea, and undulating into 
high moorlands on the eastern, or land, side. 

South of this group oi mountains, and separated 
from it by the upper waters of the holy Dee, the 
Berwyn ranges run from north-east to south-west. 



PLINLIMMON 5 

Their green and brown solitudes, with Httle of the 
rocky grandeur of Snowdon, rise occasionally into 
lonely summits, sometimes round and grassy, some- 
times with a bare crest of granite. The Aran is the 
most queenly of the group, though Cader Vronwen 
commands as extensive a prospect, and though Cader 
Idris is nearly as high. To the west and north are 
the mountains of Gwynedd, with Snowdon among 
them, a glorious multitude. To the east the hills of 
Powys, equally numerous but with softer contour, 
fade away to the dim distant lowlands of England. 

Beyond the valley of the Dovey, to the south, rises 
the desolate height of Plinlimmon. From it a long 
line of lower mountains curve to the south-west — at 
first an almost continuous stretch of high moorland, 
finally breaking up, within sight of the western sea, 
into a line of low isolated peaks. West of this half 
circle, nestling between it and Cardigan Bay, lies 
Ceredigion, through the moors and meadows of 
which a number of rivers run a short course to 
the sea. From the eastern and southern slopes the 
most important rivers of Wales fall down into 
romantic glens as they descend to the plains lying 
at the feet of the mountains. The Severn runs north- 
wards, skirting the base of the Berwyn range, before 
turning southwards under the walls of Shrewsbury. 
The Wye and the Usk, clear as silver while they 
drain the uplands of Elvel and Brycheiniog, finally 
wander sluggishly through the red lands of Gwent to 
the southern sea. 

South of the long Plinlimmon range, extending 
from the valley of the Usk in the east to the valley 



6 A LAND OF MOUNTAINS 

of the Tovvy in the west, lie the Black Mountains. 
Underneath their southern slopes lies a vast coal- 
bed ; south of them lie the pleasant undulating 
fields of Morgannwg. Westwards, between the sea 
and the southernmost spur of the Plinlimmon group, 
extend the low-lying and fertile lands of Gower an(^ 
Dyved. 

A glance at the map of Wales shows that it is 
difficult to conquer. Around its mountains, between 
them and the western sea and between them and the 
eastern plains, fringes of lowlands lie — not exceeding 
five hundred feet in altitude. Within this narrow 
fringe of fertile land rise uplands to the height of 
between five hundred and fifteen hundred feet. 
Among these, here and there, rise fastnesses to the 
height of between two and three thousand feet. The 
whole country is naturally a place of refuge, the 
home of independence. The Welsh, at the approach 
of the invader, could drive their flocks into their hill 
fastnesses ; and, safe among the storms and the rocks 
or forests, could wait until the enemy had been sent 
from the banks of Wye and sandy-bottomed Severn, 
bootless home and weather-beaten back. 

The same glance will show us that Wales is ill 
adapted for union. Its valleys are separated from 
each other by high and pathless mountains ; they 
open out on the sea of the west or on the plain of 
the east. There is no central point upon which 
paths and roads could converge, Wales never had a 
capital. 

Its wealth, agricultural and mineral, lies at the 
extreme north and at the extreme south. Between 



THE BLACK MOUNTAINS J 

the wheat lands of the Vale of Clwyd and those of 
the Vale of Glamorgan, between the Rhos and the 
Rhondda, between the Liverpool and Cardiff of 
to-day, there stretch high moorlands, still the home 
of countless plovers and the last refuge of the kite. 

The mountain, not the valley or the plain, is the 
characteristic of Welsh scenery. Wales forms part 
of the broken chain of mountains which rises in 
solitary majesty from an expanse of sea and plain 
stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Alleg- 
hanies. Its history, from beginning to end, is 
dominated by the mountain. The mountain defends, 
it separates. The lords of Snowdon were most 
successful in uniting Wales because their strongholds 
were more inaccessible, and their stormy heights a 
better nursery for warriors. Their granary, the fair 
island of Mon, was easier to defend, too, than the 
valley of the Severn, which supplied the Berwyn 
princes, or the Vale of Towy, which lay beneath the 
southern Plinlimmon range, or the wavy lowlands of 
the Vale of Glamorgan, upon which the princes of the 
Black Mountains looked down. 

But, if the mountains of Wales made political 
union difficult, they gave their inhabitants the same 
characteristics, and gave them community of ideas 
and of aims centuries before combined action became 
possible. The wild and rugged outlines of the 
mountains are mirrored as intense but broken 
purposes in the Welshman's character, always 
forming great ideals, but lacking in the steady 
perseverance of the people of the plain. The 
silent and majestic solitude of the mountains has 



8 A LAND OF MOUNTAINS 

sunk into the Welshman's character as the fataHsm 
which is the basis of his Hfe and thought. The 
mountains, his mute but suggestive companions, 
strengthen his imagination. His imagination makes 
him exceedingly impressionable — he has always loved 
poetry and theology ; but this very imagination, 
while enabling him to see great ideals, makes him 
incapable of realising them — he is too impatient to be 
capable of organisation. 

It is true that there has always been a slight 
variation of character and dialect in Wales. There 
are mountains and mountains ; there are Welshmen 
and Welshmen. There is a difference between the 
slow and strong man of Snowdon and the versatile 
laughter-loving son of Plinlimmon. The difference 
of character is expressed in literature. The strong 
abstruse thought of Arvon has little of the pathos of 
Powys, of the melody of the Vale of Towy, of the 
sunny happiness of Glamorgan. But, throughout, 
there is one character, that of a true child of the 
mountains. 

Wales is not the home of one ancient race, it is not 
the home of one ancient language. Many races have 
reached its glens and hills, some have died away, 
some remain. Many languages have died on its 
mountains ; many may be spoken again and pass 
away. But, while races and language go, the moun- 
tains remain. And they give a unity of character to 
the people who live among them. 

And here it is that we are to look for a continuity 
in Welsh history. Purity of race, continuity of 



CONTINUITY OF WELSH HISTORY g 

language, we have not. Neither have we any 
continuity of institutions ; these, Hke races and 
languages, have come and gone. But we can trace 
a continuity of character from the warHke and 
rebellious Welshmen of the dawn of our history — 
the brood of the eagle and the wolf — to the peaceful 
Welshman of the present day, the best of subjects 
and the ideal colonist. 

Geography ever triumphs over history, climate 
affects the bent of the mind as it affects the colour 
of the skin. The inhabitants of the Welsh mountains 
will ever be a separate nation — come they as a glacier 
stream from the north or as the lava torrent from 
the south. Whatever they are when they come, the 
mountains gradually and silently give them their 
own final character. And in this -sense the words 
addressed by the Welsh seer to the most energetic of 
the conquerors of Wales, the discernment by im- 
potent fatalism of the futility of the plans of the most 
masterful human will, have an ever-renewing meaning. 
" This nation, O king," said an old Welshman of 
Pencader to the victorious Henry II., "may now, as 
in times of yore, be troubled, and greatly weakened 
and destroyed by your and other power ; and it will 
often prevail by its praiseworthy exertion ; but it can 
never be wholly subdued by the wrath of man, unless 
the wrath of God shall concur. Nor do I think that 
any other nation than this of Wales, or any other 
tongue, whatever may come to pass hereafter, shall 
in the day of severe searching before the Supreme 
Judge, answer for this corner of the earth." 

A land of mountains which forms the character of 



lO A LAND OF- MOUNTAINS 

those who come to it, giving them a vague similarity 
of ideas which makes unity possible in history and 
in literature — that is the abiding fact in the history ot 
Wales. The inhabitants of the mountains feel, amid 
all their differences, that they are one nation, because 
their land is unlike other lands. Eastwards they look 
on a plain which they believe they once possessed 
and ruled. Westwards they look over a sea which 
they believe has overflowed another plain, once also 
their dominion. As far back as we can go they have 
a history — the traditions of many wandering nations 
becoming blended into one ; memories coming from 
a lost history as the sound of the bells of Aberdovey 
come from the lost land deep down below the 
western sea. 

This belief in a unity of race, and in a continuity 
of language, has this much of truth in it — the moun- 
tains absorb all races that come and give them their 
character. A land of mountains naturally becomes 
the early home of patriotism and of legend. 

As far back as we can see, nations, ever moving 
westwards across plain and sea, reached the moun- 
tains of Wales, standing on the outer edge of the 
world then known. Some remained, some passed 
over to Ireland — which is dimly visible — some 
turned back. 

To the first race that came the name Iberian has 
been given. We may take the name, at any rate, to 
mean all the people that had come to the mountains 
before the Celts. The Iberian wave of nations 
advanced, possibly, along the northern shore of the 




A TYPICAL WELSH FACE. 

{Ishvyn, the Monmouthshire poet.) 



12 A LAND OF MOUNTAINS 

Mediterranean ; it was, perhaps, not the first wave of 
people which flowed over Wales, but it is the oldest 
that has survived. The Iberian was short, dark, 
long-skulled. He had no iron implements, but his 
ground and polished flint weapons — arrow-heads, 
axes, and knives — show that, in stone, he was a deft 
and proficient worker. His sepulchre — the long 
barrow which can still be seen — was fashioned on 
the model of his dwelling ; it is, possibly, the 
dwelling left, with the dead man in possession of 
his own. 

The Iberian is still the chief element among the 
people of Wales. He predominates everywhere 
among the peasantry, he is generally the poet of the 
present day. The type is most unmistakable in the 
south-east, the land of the dark Silures who defied 
the Roman arms so long ; but it is also fairly pro- 
minent in the south-west and also in the north-west. 
Islwyn, the greatest Welsh poet of the present 
century, came from Gwent, where Iberian blood 
was probably purest, and in appearance he was 
typically Iberian. But Goronwy Owen, the greatest 
Welsh poet of the last century, and equally Iberian 
in appearance, was a native of Anglesey. 

The Celt was a great contrast to the Iberian. He 
came, probably, from a colder home ; the two Celtic . 
waves, the Brythonic and the Goidelic, are supposed 
to have come along the southern edge of the great 
northern plain of Europe. The new-comer was tall, 
blue-eyed, and fair-haired. He was a mighty hunter 
and a conqueror ; and he settled down side by side 
with the Iberians he had subdued, as a master ruHng 



IBERIAN AND CELT 1 3 

over slaves. The mediaeval prince was a Celt ; in 
Welsh literature, down almost to modern times, the 
poet's lady love is a blonde — her hair is like the 
yellow broom or a shower of gold or the distant fires 
which consume the mountain heather. 

The Celt had weapons of bronze and of iron, and 
this explains the thoroughness of the Celtic con- 
quest. Dim and confused memories of the might of 
iron have come down to our own day. Many a 
Welsh tale tells how a shepherd obtained a lake 
maiden in marriage, with a goodly dowry of cattle, 
on condition that he was not to touch her with iron. 
If touched with iron, even by the merest accident, 
wife and children and cattle all disappear into some 
fairy haunted lake — Llyn y Van, Savaddan, or Llyn 
Arennig. 

The customs of Iberian and Celt were widely 
different. It may be that the basis of Iberian society 
was at first purely tribal ; the basis of Celtic society 
was certainly a family expanded into a tribe con- 
taining different but related families. It may be that 
the Iberian was totemistic, and the numerous local 
nicknames of modern Wales may be old totems — the 
pigs of Anglesey or of Pembroke, the dogs of 
Denbigh, the cats of Ruthin, the deer of Llanvyllin, 
the crows of Harlech, the gadflies of Mawddwy. At 
one time, probably, men traced their pedigrees to 
these animals ; as late as the sixteenth century Arise 
Evans, who used to tell Oliver Cromwell his dreams, 
finished his long pedigree with a very barbarian 
flourish — "the son of the red lion, the son of the 
wren." Among the peasantry of the most en- 



14 A LAND OF MOUNTAINS 

lightened parts of Wales the nicknames are tolerated 
as meaningless nursery fables ; in some parts they 
are keenly resented as an insult. 

Before the Celts came, or under their influence, the 
institution of marriage was developed among the 
Iberians. Marriage by capture meets us in the 
legends which carry us furthest back. One of the 
oldest Welsh tales gives an account of the search for 
the bride Olwen, and the condition of her marriage 
is her father's death and the destruction of her home. 
Within the memory of people now living, in the 
lower Plinlimmon district, a peasant marriage took 
the form of a marriage by capture. 

In religion, also, there was probably a great 
difference. The dark and mysterious druidism, with 
its memories of human sacrifice, was possibly Iberian, 
and not Celtic. 

One thing is certain — there is, all through early and 
mediaeval Wales, a dominant class of free tribesmen 
and a subject class of communities of serfs. In the laws 
of the one, kinship is the basis of every political right; 
in the lav/s of the other, the stranger shares in the 
division of the land like the native. It is natural to 
assume that the dominant class is the conqueror Celt 
— exceedingly jealous of his rights and of the purity 
of his blood ; it is natural to assume that the lower 
class, regardless of blood or privileges, is the conquered 
Iberian. 

By the time of the birth of Christ, it is probable 
that the Goidelic wave of Celts had passed over the 
whole of the islands of Britain, conquering and sub- 
duing as they went. They had been followed by 



GOIDEL AND BRYTHON I 5 

their Brythonic kinsmen as far as the banks of the 
Severn and beyond. A bitter struggle took place 
between the two kindred races for the possession of 
the mountains of Wales, the Brythons being con- 
tinually reinforced by new-comers who pushed them 
on westwards, and the Goidels by immigrants return- 
ing from Ireland, who had found they could not 
wander further west. To the Iberian population, the 
struggle merely meant a change of masters ; they 
remained, undoubtedly, through it all. All along the 
Welsh coast, rude earth fortresses — thrown up for 
defence by a race on the point of being driven into 
the sea or by a race seeking a foothold again in a 
land that was once its own — show how long and how 
bitter the struggle must have been. Most of these 
ancient fortresses are mute; but some, like the rapidly 
disappearing Dinas Dinlle, in course of being de- 
voured by the sea, have become the home of some 
striking Celtic legend. 

When the struggle between the two races was over, 
the mountains were in the possession of four groups of 
tribes : in each group some dominant tribe or family 
kept the others united in subjection. Gwynedd, or 
the Snowdon district, was the possession of the 
Decangi. Over Powys, the extensive Berwyn district, 
the Ordovices ruled. In Dyved and Ceredigion, or 
the Plinlimmon district, the Demetse lived. Morgan- 
nwg and Gwent, the Black Mountain district, was 
the home of the Silures. 

It is probable that the Decangi in the north and 
the Silures and Demetae in the south were the 
Goidelic conquerors and rulers. The Ordovices were 



THE CYMRY 

Enslish Miues 




THE FOUR NATIONS 1/ 

perhaps, a Brythonic people pushing up from the 
plains along the valley of the Severn, and down from 
its headwaters to the western sea. In their advance 
they would be encroaching on the tribes of Snowdon 
to the north, and on the Silures and Demetae on the 
south. 

But, of whatever race they were, it is clear that 
each of the four districts of mountains — Snowdon, 
the Berwyn, Plinlimmon, and the Black Mountains 
— had a nation in course of formation within it. 
The four districts still remain as the four dioceses 
of Wales — Bangor, St. Asaph, St. David's, and 
Llandaff. 

The Iberian had one great advantage over the Celt 
— he was better acclimatised because he had come 
first. Had the Celtic element not been reinforced, 
the Iberian would have left a more important contri- 
bution to history than fairy tales, and would have 
asserted himself long before the days of modern 
democracy. But the Celt was not the last comer or 
the last conqueror. He was followed by the Teuton, 
a distant relation. First came the Saxon and the 
Angle, then the Dane, and then the Norman. 

But long before these reached the mountains of 
Wales, to play their part in its history and to add 
new component elements to its people, a new power 
had arisen in the world. 



II 



ROME AND ARTHUR 



Rome rose right in the path of the migration of 
nations westwards. Its empire extended from the 
Mediterranean almost to the Baltic. The path which 
had been taken by Iberian and Celt was closed for 
four hundred years. It is true that new wanderers 
were gathering in the east and the north, but Roman 
legions and Roman walls were to protect the west 
against the new invasions for centuries. 

Wales was the furthest land westwards that the 
Romans conquered ; it was almost the last country 
to be conquered by Roman arms, it was among the 
first to be left. But the influence of the Roman 
domination was lasting even here ; it profoundly 
affected the later development of Wales. 

In the year 43, in the reign of the Emperor 
Claudius, a powerful Roman army, consisting of 
four legions of about five thousand men each and 
of as many auxiliaries, landed in South Britain. It 
was under the command of Aulus Plautius, and 
under him served Vespasian and Titus, the father 
and son who, before ascending the imperial throne, 



THE DEFEAT OF CARATACUS 1 9 

won fame in the conquest of the Briton and the Jew 
— the one in the extreme west and the other in the 
extreme east of the empire of Rome. The upland 
plain south of the Thames was soon conquered, and 
the victors descended into the valley of the Severn. 
Their onward march brought them into contact 
with the Catuvelauni, a powerful tribe inhabiting 
the midland plains, and whose sway extended to 
the mountains of the west. The radiant Cymbeline, 
king of this great conquering Brythonic tribe, was 
dead, and the army of the tribe was led by his son 
Caratacus. After fighting thirty battles, Caratacus 
left the Romans masters ol the plain, and retired 
to the mountains of the west, where he found refuge 
among the Silures. 

Ostorius Scapula followed Aulus Plautius, and 
soon Glevum and Uriconium — the one an important 
city still and the other a lonely, gigantic ruin — were 
built to overawe the conquered plain and to threaten 
the still uticonquered mountains. The first advance 
was made against the Decangi of the north, and 
Ostorius came in sight of the western sea without 
meeting with any determined opposition. He had 
to turn back to quell a rebellion on the plains, and 
then to attempt the most difficult part of the Roman 
conquest — the crushing of the power of the Silures, 
now led by the experienced Caratacus. The final 
battle was fought in the country of the Ordovices, 
probably on one of the slopes of the Berwyn. 
Caratacus led a confederation of tribes, and his final 
position was skilfully chosen. The Roman army 
found itself before a river of varying depth. Beyond 



20 ROME AND ARTHUR 

the river rose a rampart, behind which the Britons 
occupied a rising ground in dense masses, well 
protected on their flanks, and their retreat secure 
to the frowning hill-tops behind them. The Roman 
army crossed the river and rushed the wall with 
great loss, but in the desperate hand-to-hand fight 
which ensued they won a decisive victory. Caratacus 
and the Britons fled, and, soon afterwards, the famous 
leader was betrayed into the hands of the Romans 
by the queen of the Brigantes. Heir of the idea of 
a Brythonic unity of Britain, he struggled against 
the might of Rome for nine years, and in his last 
great battle, which was to be the beginning of the 
recovery of freedom to his people or the seal of 
everlasting bondage, it was decided that the Roman, 
and not the Brython, was to rule the isle of Britain. 
The name of Caratacus lived in Celtic song and 
story, and one legend — too beautiful to be true — 
makes the captivity of Caratacus the cause of the 
introduction of the gospel into Britain. 

The captive Caratacus was a striking figure in a 
triumphal procession at Rome, but the spirit of the 
hill tribes was not broken. A fierce guerilla warfare 
was carried on in the woods and morasses, embittered 
by the rapacity of the Roman officers and by the 
fierce hatred of the Silures against their conquerors. 
The victor Ostorius died, worn out by the anxiety 
connected with the prolonged and successful resis- 
tance of the Silures. His successor Aulus Didius 
was more wary — burdened with years and honours — 
and v/as content with keeping the Silures in check. 
Veranius was sent to succeed Didius and to resume 



THE CONQUEST OF MON 21 

a policy of conquest, but he died before he was able 
to do more than plan a few petty raids. 

Nero sent the ambitious Suetonius Paulinus to 
finish the conquest of Britain, He imitated Ostorius 
by first crushing the tribes of the north. Ostorius 
had seen the western sea ; Suetonius reached it, and 
determined to conquer the island of Mon, the 
refuge of fugitives and the home of a mysterious 
religion. Flat-bottomed boats were built to carry 
the infantry through the treacherous, shifting sand- 
banks of the Menai ; the cavalry forded the shallows 
and swam the deep stream. 

The enemy that met them was very unlike the 
enemy that had faced the army of Ostorius. On 
the flat shore stood an army in dense array — no 
unusual sight. But between its ranks dashed women 
clad in black, with dishevelled hair, and carrying 
flaming torches. Around stood priests, with uplifted 
hands, pouring imprecations against the invaders of 
the sacred groves of their dark island. The weird 
sight struck terror into the Roman soldiers, but their 
generals aroused them out of their temporary panic, 
the standards were borne steadily on, and soon 
warriors and druids and women were enveloped in 
flames. 

As if their gods had heard the curses of the 
druids, the statue of Victory at the colony of 
Camalodunum fell prostrate, and the flame of revolt 
sped with destructive rapidity over the plains. 
Camalodunum was stormed ; a Roman army was. 
cut to pieces ; London, already the meeting-place of 
ships and merchants, was left to its fate. Suetonius 




Q: *s 



THE POLICY OF AG RICO LA 23 

crushed the insurrection, but the Britons saw him 
cringing to a freedman, and finally resigning his 
post to one who was content with inaction, which 
he called peace. 

In the year 69 Vespasian became emperor, and 
the conquest of Britain was pushed on with renewed 
energy. The long and bitter resistance of the 
Silures was crushed by Julius Frontinus, and by 
the year 78 the Roman conquest of the mountains 
of Wales was assured. It had seemed as if the 
Welsh mountains were to be the barrier to the 
furthest flight of the Roman eagle ; but, owing to 
the military skill of Frontinus and the administra- 
tive genius of Agricola, Carnarvon and Carmarthen 
took the place of Chester and Caerleon as the furthest 
limits of the Roman empire in the west 

The last battle was fought by tlie Ordovices. 
Their power once broken, it was easy to advanos 
again to Mon ; the Menai was crossed a second 
time, and the conquest completed. 

When, in the picturesque pages of Tacitus, we 
come to the description of the policy of his father- 
in-law, Cnseus Julius Agricola, we see the Roman 
conquest advanced more rapidly and more perma- 
nently by the victories of peace than by the victories 
of war. If the filial reverence of Tacitus has not 
warped his judgment as a historian, it is clear that, 
while winning their victories, Ostorius and Suetonius 
thought of the land whose eagles they were carrying 
westwards, Agricola thought of the land he was 
subjecting to the might and the civilisation of Rome. 

Agricola, in 84, left a country that was rapidly 



24 ROME AND ARTHUR 

assimilating the new civilisation. For nearly four 
hundred years the Roman ruled it. Its great groups 
of kindreds, with their subject population, were still 
under kinglets, who wished to exchange their patriar- 
chal chieftainship for the more absolute rule of a 
Roman official. Great camps occupied places of 
strategic value, Roman stone houses rose on sunny 
hillsides, and a system of roads, begun for military 
purposes, was gradually completed for the convenience 
of the trader who introduced new commodities, new 
terms to express developed arts, and a new religion. 
On each side of the line of mountains a great road 
ran. On the land side a road ran from Caerleon in 
the valley of the Usk to Caer in the valley of the 
Dee. On the sea side a road ran from Carmarthen 
at the mouth of the Towy to Carnarvon on the 
Menai. Connecting these were many cross-roads, 
which can still be traced as they run their straight 
course in spite of morass or steep hillside, and along 
which tradition has dim visions of " Elen of the 
Legions " — the form that the power of Rome has 
taken in Welsh legend — as she led her veterans to 
victory. Agriculture flourished, for the Roman 
taught while he ruled. The veil was drawn for a 
moment from the mineral wealth of the country — 
from the copper of Mon, the gold of Merioneth, the 
lead of Powys, and the iron of Gwent. Christianity 
took the place of heathenism, except in the corners 
to which the roads did not run. It seemed as if a 
new people, united and regenerated, speaking a new 
language, was to be created by Rome. 

The persistence of Rome in Wales — in its political 




THE ROMAN STEPS E\ ARDUDWY. 

{From a photograph by H. O^uen, Barmouth.) 
25 



26 ROME AND ARTHUR 

thought, in its language, and in its Hterature — is 
explained partly by the fact that it brought a new 
civilisation to an impressionable people, but chiefly 
because it had to defend that civilisation against the 
growing aggression of heathen invaders. The heathens 
of the north sent wild birds, carrying fire on their 
wings, to alight in the fields of ripe corn ; the long, 
flat-bottomed boats of hardy pirates infested the 
coast. The migration of nations was beginning 
anew, walls and legions could no further resist the 
pressure of the great hordes that had been gathering 
for so long in the east and in the north. 

Britain fell naturally into two provinces for the 
purpose of defence. The lower province of the south- 
eastern plains was defended against Teutonic pirates 
by the Count of the Saxon Shore ; the upper pro- 
vince of the mountains was chiefly associated with 
the Dux Britanniarum, whose political supremacy 
reasserted itself after the fall of Rome in the Bret- 
walda of the one province and the Gwledig of the 
other — the two terms being the English and Welsh 
translations of the Latin title. The eastern province 
was conquered, between 450 and 520, by two great 
families of Teutonic invaders, the Angles and the 
Saxons, who shattered the Roman power in the 
south-east of the island. The Angles came to the 
mouth of the Humber, and extended their conquests 
northwards and southwards along the coast. The 
Saxons came to the mouth of the Thames, and 
likewise took possession of the coast north and south 
of the river. 

Roman unity, now associated with British inde- 



DEFENCE OF SEA AND WALL 2y 

pendence of the barbarians, died far harder in the 
west. The two tasks associated with Roman rule 
were the command of the sea and the defence of the 
great wall of the north. One of the rulers of the sea, 
Carausius, had established a temporary independence 
during the period of Roman rule ; one of the 
defenders of the wall was to win a more lasting 
sovereignty. When Rome had become too weak to 
interfere with the distant mountains of Wales, the 
family of Cunedda rose to greatness as a family of 
officials, chiefly concerned with the defence of the 
wall. The Pictish attacks on the valley of the Clyde, 
and the Angle advance along the H umber, drove 
them southwards, and Deganwy became the chief 
seat of their power. Deganwy is now a desolate and 
insignificant ruin, overlooking the thriving sea-side 
resort of Llandudno, but still commanding views of 
seas and islands over which the heirs of the Romans 
once held sway. 

While the invaders were conquering the plains of 
England, Maelgwn was vigorously restoring the unity 
of the western province. Mon and the seas were 
watched by the fleet of the " island dragon." From 
Deganwy he advanced southwards, and forced the semi- 
independent kinglets to recognise in him the heir of 
Roman rule. The unwilling chiefs came to Aber- 
dovey, and tradition says that they all sat in their 
chairs on the sea-shore, to decide in solemn conclave 
who was to be king of the isle of Britain. They 
came to a strange decision — he who could sit longest 
in his chair in spite of the rising tide was to rule 
over all. Now Maeldav the Old had prepared for 



28 ROME AND ARTHUR 

Maelgwn a chair made of waxed wings, and it floated 
when all the other chairs had been thrown down. 
The rule of Maelgwn meant the political subjection 
of all races in the western province to a British king, 
and the final triumph of Christianity in its long 
struggle with the heathenism which still held sway 
over the Goidelic people of the western coast-line. 

The vigorous working out of Maelgwn's un- 
scrupulous policy is described by Gildas, who con- 
demns his ambition and his renunciation of monastic 
vows in no measured terms. The crow had once 
turned dove when Maelgwn gave up the thorny cares 
of empire for the calm solitude of the monastery ; 
but, recalled by worldly ambition, his rule was 
arbitrary and his might irresistible, and Gildas hurls 
against the mighty victor words that were afterwards 
thrown in anger at the last despairing prince of 
Wales — " Woe to thee that spoilest, shalt thou not 
be spoiled ? " 

About 550, when Maelgwn ruled over the 
mountains and seas of the west, two new barbarian 
powers were forming in the east. Ida, the Flame- 
bearer, the Angle who had established his power on 
the rock fortress of Bamborough, threatened the 
northern part of Maelgwn's realm ; the Saxons, 
though London barred the Thames estuary, were 
advancing over Salisbury Plain towards the lower 
valley of the Severn. Popular imagination was 
deeply affected by the death of Maelgwn of the 
yellow plague. Soon the western province he had 
united was to bear the full force of Teutonic attack. 
The Saxons came first. Ceawlin appeared in the 



THE ISOLATION OF WALES 29 

Severn valley in 577. The victory of Deorham ex- 
tended West Saxon power to the sea, and Cornwall 
fell away finally from Wales. The great cities of the 
Severn, from Gloucester to Uriconium, were sacked 
and devastated ; and it was not until he was advan- 
cing on the valley of the Dee that the conqueror 
was hurled back in the battle of Fethanlea in 584. 

As soon as the Saxon had recoiled from the attack 
on the western province, the Angle came. About 
613 the Angle king Ethelfrith defeated the Britons at 
the battle of Chester. The Angle dominions now 
included parts of the vale of Maelor, and reached the 
western sea, and the great fortress of Chester no 
longer united the mountains of the west and of the 
north under one rule. The victor}^ of Chester, an 
account of which Bede might have got in his child- 
hood from one who had been there, cut Strathclyde 
and the whole of the north from Wales. The whole 
that now remained of the Roman province was the 
mass of mountains between the plains and the sea — 
modern Wales. 

One great attempt was made by Cadwallon to 
recover the north, and to wear the crown of Britain. 
For one year alone he succeeded in holding it ; when 
he died fighting for it near the Great Wall in 635, 
he bequeathed to his son Cadwaladr a vanishing 
crown, powerful enemies, a distracted and a plague- 
stricken country. 

The Cymric attempt at continuing the political 
unity bequeathed by Rome to the west, found ex- 
pression in the romances of Arthur, whose dim 
and majestic presence gradually dominates Welsh 



30 ROME AND ARTHUR 

political thought. A Welsh poet wandered from 
grave to grave, asking the same simple question over 
each grave on which the rain fell : " Whose grave is 
this ? " One slept under the mighty oak, another 
where the surf beat on the shore ; one on the crest 
of the hill, another in the lowly dale. One grave 
was long and narrow ; another was covered with 
dead grass and sere leaves. It was not known who 
lay in one grave ; in another it was well known that 
Cynddylan slept — he of the ruddy sword and the 
white steeds. Among the graves on hill and dale 
and sea-shore there was no grave for Arthur. He 
had become the spirit of unity, of independence, of 
stately wisdom ; " folly it would be to think that 
Arthur has a grave." 

The period which bequeathed to Wales the 
mythical champion of its traditional unity, also 
gave it a patron saint. St. David represents the 
final victory of Christ over a host of deities — Lud of 
the Silver Hand, patron of flocks and ships ; Merlin, 
imprisoned in an enchanted palace ; Lear, and 
old King Cole ; Gwydion ap Don, who created the 
maiden Flower-aspect from rose and broom and 
anemony ; Elen, goddess of marching armies, and 
Ceridwen, goddess of wisdom and knowledge ; and a 
host of others, some mighty and some maimed, some 
possessed of wonderful power, others known from the 
good they did. The disappearance of the motley 
throng was not final ; many of them, especially well 
deities, reappeared disguised as the saints of the new 
religion — some have remained in popular superstition 
to this day. 



Ill 



THE WELSH KINGS 



With the death of Cadwaladr, the struggle for the 
recovery of the north was given up for ever. For the 
next six hundred years the struggle is a different 
one ; it is between a king who regarded himself as 
the champion of the unity of the Britons, wearing 
" the crown of Arthur," and the princes who were 
descended from the tribal kinglets. 

The chief source of information concerning the 
attempt at uniting Wales is the " Chronicle of the 
Princes." The earliest copy of it we possess was 
written during the first half of the fourteenth century, 
probably at the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in 
Ceredigion. It begins, as it ends, with the loss of a 
crown ; it begins with the loss of the " crown of 
Britain," it ends in the midst of the war which caused 
the loss of the crown of Wales. It is full, picturesque, 
and generally trustworthy. 

The loss of the north brought with it the temporary 
destruction of the central power. For half a century 
the princes remained independent. The weakness of 



32 THE WELSH KINGS 

Northumbria — for the Picts had stormed Dumbarton, 
and had annihilated the Northumbrian army at 
Nechtansmere, in 6%6 — made common action against 
her unnecessary. But the rise of another power 
forced them to turn to Rhodri Mohvynog, the grand- 
son of Cadwaladr, for defence. 

Mercia rose, during the eighth century, under three 
able kings — Ethelbald, Offa, and Cenwulf As the 
chief political power had passed from the north to 
Wales, it passed also from Northumbria to Mercia. 
On opposite sides of the Severn the two rivals rose 
— Wales under Rhodri Molwynog, Mercia under 
Ethelbald. The two kings died in 755, and left very 
different successors. Rhodri Molwynog was suc- 
ceeded by his two sons, Conan and Howel, who 
fought against each other, and allowed the princes to 
destroy each other, or to be conquered separately by 
Mercia. Ethelbald was succeeded by the ablest and 
most ambitious of all the Angle kings. Offa tried, 
during his reign of nearly forty years, to make Mercia 
the dominant power, with an archbishopric of its own 
at Lichfield, with good coins and possession of the 
great navigable rivers, and with boundaries extending 
far beyond the Severn. The rich and pleasant 
country between the Severn and the Wye was con- 
(juered ; Worcester and Gloucester ceased to be 
border towns, Hereford and Shrewsbury became 
English. The Welsh boundary did not recede with- 
out many battles, but the princes did not make 
common cause against Offa ; he " slaughtered the 
men of South Wales " mercilessly, and fixed upon 
the mysterious dyke, which can still be followed from 



THE BLACK NATIONS 33 

the mouth of the Dee to the mouth of the Taff, and 
which still bears the great Mercian's name, as the 
western limit of his kingdom. 

Mercia was now prosperous and consolidated, 
Wales harried and divided. While Conan and 
Howel were fighting for the possession of Mon, 
Cenwulf, Offa's successor, pierced through Wales to 
Dyved in the south ; and in the north he harried 
Snowdon and burnt Deganwy, the old home of the 
royal family of Gwynedd. 

During these times of anarchy and misery, while 
Mercia was attacking from the east, a new and a 
dreaded enemy appeared in the west. The black 
Norse nations — driven by famine or love of freedom 
and adventure from the fiords of Norway — sailed 
down along the western coast of Britain ; and the 
rapidity of the movements and the suddenness of the 
attacks of the pagans, struck dismay into the whole 
country on the west side of the mountains, from 
Mon to St. David's. 

With Mercia threatening attack from the east, with 
the Norsemen gathering like a storm-cloud in the 
west, with a brother in open rebellion, and with the 
princes fighting against each other while Angle and 
Norseman were closing round them, Conan died in 
815. He left behind him a daughter as heiress to a 
burnt home, a harried land, and an impossible task. 

The gloom with which the ninth century opened, 
however, soon began to dispel. Mercia was beginning 
to decline, and by 828 it had been subjected to the 
rising power of Wessex. Howel died soon after his 
brother, and left Mervin, Conan's son-in-law, as the 

4 



34 THE WELSH KINGS 

sole representative of the family of Maelgwn. Mer- 
vin's chequered reign prepared the way for his son, 
Rhodri the Great — the central figure of the ninth 
century — who began to rule in 844. 

Rhodri united the Welsh princes against the 
Norsemen, and defeated the sea rovers in a great 
battle, killing Horm, their leader. He probably had 
a fleet to defend Mon ; and aimed at an alliance with 
the kings of Ireland against the Danes, His fame 
made him all-powerful in Wales, and he made his 
power equally felt through the length and the breadth 
of the land by appointing his six warlike sons to 
rule under him. 

By 869 the Danes were in possession of Dublin, 
Dumbarton, and York; in 871 they began their 
irresistible march southwards. Alfred of Wessex 
and Rhodri of Wales alone — both surnamed Great 
by their people — ^tried to organise the forces of their 
country against the invader. In ^"j^ Rhodri was a 
fugitive in Ireland ; in 878 Alfred was in hiding 
among the fastnesses of Athelney. Rhodri soon 
came back, but as the ally of the Danes. 

Common action between Wessex and Wales was 
impossible because Mercia, now governed by Alfred's 
brother-in-law, was the traditional enemy of Wales. 
In 864 the Mercians had invaded Rhodri's kingdom ; 
in 877, while the Danes had thrown their whole 
power against Wessex, a Mercian army penetrated 
into Mon, and there Rhodri and his brother fell in 
a battle for which they were unprepared. 

Rhodri's sons soon avenged their father's death at 
the battle of Conway ; and, by allying with Wessex, 



IVAR AND DISUNION 35 

they drove back the Danes who were harrying the 
southern slopes of the Black Mountains and pene- 
trating into the inland valleys of the Upper Usk. 
The lull in the storm of Danish attack, and the 
conciliatory attitude of Wessex, made the princes of 
Wales impatient of the rule of the sons of Rhodri. 
Anarawd had to chastise the men of Ceredigion and 
Ystrad Towy ; the whole country south of Ystrad Towy 
— Brycheiniog and Dyved, as well as Morgannwg and 
Gwent — had sought the protection of Alfred against 
the tyranny of the sons of Rhodri. Finally Anarawd 
and Cadell and Mervm — the surviving sons of Rhodri 
— entered into Alfred's friendship, giving up their 
Danish and Northumbrian alliances. It was in these 
times that Asser, a Welsh monk of St. David's, was 
attracted by Alfred's love of learning, and came to 
see the extension of the great West Saxon king's 
power and to write the history of his life. 

Anarawd and Cadell died at the beginning of the 
tenth century, soon after Alfred. From among the 
grandsons of Rhodri no great ruler rose — they fought 
against the Danes on the western coast, and they 
fought against each other, preferring the local inde- 
pendence which they were to have crushed to Rhodri's 
dream of unity which they were to realise. 

From among them rose, however, the lawgiver of 
Wales. In those days of war and anarchy, there was 
a general desire for the codification of laws. Un- 
doubtedly the example of Charles the Great — " great 
and famous " Asser calls him — was before the eyes of 
West Saxon and Welshman alike. The Welsh law- 
giver was not a great king — he was Howel, son of 
Cadell, and he ruled with his brothers in Dyved. 




^ 



.1" 



THE LAWS OF HOW EL 'i^'J 

We have copies of the laws of Howel, in Welsh 
and Latin, written between two and three hundred 
years after their compilation, and before any very 
extensive alterations could have been introduced. 
They give us a bewildering mass of picturesque 
customs, many of them suggestive of ancient states 
of society which had disappeared, many prophetic of 
the changes which have produced the modern system. 
There is one great radical difference between the 
Wales of the Laws and later Wales — the social 
system is tribal, and not territorial. The political 
unit is always a group of families, not a district of 
land. The king is not the owner of land, he is the 
patriarch of his people. 

At the head of the whole system stood the king. 
Most important was the king of Gwynedd, in his court 
at Aberfifraw, to him alone was gold paid as a fine 
for treason ; then came the king of South Wales in 
his court at Dynevor ; then the king of Powys, in 
his court at Mathraval. For the codification of 
customs, however, the three great divisions are 
north, south-west, and south-east Wales, each of 
which has a version of its own of the code drawn 
up by Howel. 

In the great hall at Aberffraw the king was inviol- 
able ; the violation of his protection, or violence in 
his presence, could only be atoned for by a great 
fine — a hundred cows and a white bull with red 
ears for each cantrev he possessed, a rod of gold 
as long as himself and as thick as his little finger, 
and a plate of gold as broad as his face and as 
thick as a ploughman's nail. His sons, nephews. 



38 THE WELSH KINGS 

and any relatives he chose to summon, surrounded 
him, and could make free progress among his 
subjects. Of the great officers the chief of the 
household came next to the king ; he was, above all 
others, the executive officer of the court. The chief 
judge occupied at night the seat occupied by the 
king during the day, so that justice should always 
be obtainable. The duties and privileges of all the 
members of the king's retinuf are minutely described, 
such as those of the chief falconer, who had to lodge 
in the king's barn lest the smoke should affect the 
hawks' sight, but who goes on progress like a king 
among the king's villeins ; or those of the bard of 
the household, who is to sing to God and to the king, 
and to receive royal gifts; or those of the chief hunts- 
man, who need not swear except by his horn and 
leashes, and who could not be forced to answer any 
claim unless cited before he put his boots on in the 
morning ; or of the mediciner, who is inviolable while 
attending the sick, who gets his light at night, and 
his regular fee for herb and red ointment and blood- 
letting ; or those of the unpopular summoner, whose 
spear was not to be more than three yards long lest 
his approach should be discovered, and who got a 
sieve of oats and an empty egg-shell as damages if 
he was attacked while sitting in court instead of 
standing. Some had exceedingly simple duties, like 
the hereditary footholder of the king or the royal 
candle-bearer. Others had much to do, men like 
the door -ward, whose difficult and miscellaneous 
duties were an excellent training for the passages 
of wit between him and the strangers who demanded 
or begged for leave to pass through the gate. 



THE TRIBES OF WALES 39 

Under the king, owing tribute and service to him, 
were the tribe groups. Sometimes they would be 
governed by a son or nephew whom the king chose 
to set over them. The tribal chief was a king in 
miniature — he represented his people, he was advised 
by an elected chief of the household and helped by 
the avenger who led the tribe during a blood feud, he 
presided over the tribal court, he admitted youths to 
their tribal rights, and he was the intermediary 
between the tribe and the king. 

The land was tilled by family groups, who remained 
together to the third generation, when the land was 
re-divided, and new homesteads formed. Residence 
in the family homestead, the big hall built around a 
hearth where the fire never died out, carried with it 
a share of the family land and the privileges of a 
governing class. For there was a subject population, 
who paid tribute to the free tribesmen, who had no 
pride of kin, and into whose community strangers 
were readily admitted. 

The attacks of the Danes, the introduction of 
money, the development of trade were beginning to 
break down the rigid exclusiveness of the governing 
tribesmen ; and the complex social system, based on 
antiquated privileges of descendants of conquerors, 
was no longer possible. It was to retain and to 
define the old order, in face of the revolution caused 
by Danish attack and commercial development alike, 
that Howel the Good codified the customs of Wales. 

It was easier to codify laws than to enforce them ; 
a weak king could do the one, it required a strong 



40 THE WELSH KINGS 

king to do the other. The Dane continually attacked 
the coast, and the smoke of burning churches and 
villages, from Holyhead to St. David's, betrayed his 
frequent presence. The English attacked from the 
east, and carried devastation into Gwent, Morgannwg, 
and Brycheiniog. Everywhere princes became in- 
dependent. Meredith, grandson of Howel the Good, 
alone of the race of Rhodri, ruled over Dyved and 
Ceredigion, and he had to pay tribute to the Danes 
and to hire them. And at his death, as in the days 
of Rhodri, the line of Maelgwn all but disappeared ; 
it was represented by one girl only, Angharad, 
daughter of Meredith. 

The Danes and the Angles poured over the land ; 
and in Wales, as elsewhere, men might well believe 
that the end of the tenth century was to be the end 
of the world. 

Wales had begun to associate the rule of the 
race of Rhodri with protection and peace, with the 
maintenance of the laws of Howel the Good. The 
husband of Angharad — Lly welyn ap Seisyll — was 
welcomed in Gwynedd, the home of his wife's race. 
The strength of the desire for a restoration of the 
royal house is seen from the fact that a pretender — : 
he said he was the son of Meredith — was accepted by 
the men of the Deheubarth as their prince. Once 
Gwynedd was fully secured, Llywelyn marched 
against the pretender ; a great battle was fought at 
Aber Gwili, in the vale of Towy, and Llywelyn 
became king of Wales. He lived in Gwynedd, and 
had a well-organised army. His reign was looked 
back to as a reign of peace and of wonderful 



GRIFFITH AP LLYWELYN 4 1 

prosperity ; his kingdom, from sea to sea, being full 
of men and of cattle, with no poor within it, and no 
devastated region. 

There were signs, however, that the peace and 
prosperity were not to last. The Danes came again ; 
and the old king saw St. David's in flames. And 
when he died in 1022, the princes everywhere claimed 
independence, and Griffith ap Llywelyn became a 
fugitive from the land his father had ruled so well. 

Between 1022 and 1038 the princes ruled and the 
invader came — the Mercian ravaged the valleys of the 
Dee and the Upper Severn, long ships full of armed 
Danes came from the sea. Griffith ap Llywelyn was 
welcomed to Gwynedd ; he had his father's vigour, 
and he wished to restore the peace of his father's 
reign. 

He drove the Mercians back, winning a great 
victory at Rhyd y Groes, on the Severn, in 1039. 
He then turned southwards to drive Howel ap Edwin 
from the Deheubarth of which that usurper had taken 
possession. A great battle at Pencader, in 1041, gave 
Griffith possession of Ceredigion ; another decisive 
victory over Howel's hired pagans at the mouth of 
the Towy, in 1044, extended the boundaries of his 
kingdom to the Severn Sea. 

Griffith saw that the extension of his power would 
bring him into collision with Wessex. He saw the 
rise of the power of Harold, earl of Wessex. In 1055, 
Aelfgar, son of the earl of Mercia, was outlawed ; and 
Gurth, Harold's brother, was set over his earldom. 
There was an old feud between Wales and Mercia, 
and Aelfgar's uncle had fallen among the Mercian 



42 THE WELSH KINGS 

slain at Rhyd y Groes. But Aelfgar saw that Harold 
could not be resisted without Welsh aid ; Griffith saw 
that the Saxon Gurth in Mercia, and the Norman 
Ralph at Hereford, would be a perpetual menace to 
him. The Mercian earl and the Welsh king made 
common cause ; and Griffith married Eadgyth, 
Aelfgar's beautiful daughter. 

Griffith marched against Ralph, swept his panic- 
struck army off the field, and stormed Hereford. 
Harold recovered Hereford, but he had to restore 
Aelfgar. The power of Harold was growing — all 
England, save Mercia, was under him or his brothers; 
the crown would evidently be his on the death of his 
childless brother-in-law Edward the Confessor. The 
centre of opposition to him was Griffith ap Llywelyn. 

Griffith was strong in his alliance with the earl of 
Mercia, in the unity and prosperity of his kingdom, in 
his army of light armed Welshmen, and in his fleet. 
In 1062 the final struggle began. Griffith crossed his 
border ; but retired before the heavy armed Saxon 
army, declining battle. Harold armed his men in 
Welsh fashion ; and made Gloucester his head- 
quarters. 

He tried, first of all, to surprise Griffith in his home 
at Rhuddlan, in the Vale of Clwyd, in the depth of 
winter. His march was an exceedingly rapid one, 
and his appearance in Gwynedd was so unexpected 
that Griffith had barely time to escape to sea in his 
ship. Harold then changed his plan. With the 
coming of spring two armies were to make a 
systematic conquest of Wales, — Harold with a West 
Saxon army was to march from Bristol along the 



GRIFFITH AND HAROLD 43 

south coast, and Tostig with a Northumbrian army 
was to threaten Gwynedd. Griffith's plan was to 
keep out of the way, and to attack Harold as he 
retired. The devastation of Wales went on from 
May to August, and Griffith's inaction exasperated 
some of his own people. He was betrayed, and his 
head was brought as a peace offering to the conqueror. 
Thus was treacherously slain one of the greatest kings 
that had ever ruled over Welsh kin ; " the head and 
the shield and the protector of the Britons." 

Harold placed the conquered country under Bleddyn 
and Rhiwallon, half brothers of Griffith. In the late 
summer of 1065, Harold thought he could have a 
little quiet hunting in Wales, and a building was set 
up for him at Portskewet in Gwent. But an outlawed 
descendant of the old princes of Glamorgan came, 
and carried everything away. Harold, however, 
could pay no further attention to Wales — the revolt 
of the lawless Northumbrians, the death of Edward 
the Confessor, and his own fall at Senlac followed 
each other in quick succession, 





<^i ««^f m S^ ^'' 



•HI ^^^. 





IV 



THE NORMAN CONQUEST 



The battle of Senlac was not the end of the 
Norman conquest of England. The power of 
Wessex was broken, it is true, with the fall of 
Harold ; and London took the place of Winchester 
as the capital of the country. But the submission 
of Mercia and of Northumbria was but nominal, due 
more to jealousy of Wessex than to any desire to be 
ruled by a strong king from London. The political 
ideal of William the Norman soon became apparent — 
the subjection of earl, baron, and town alike to the 
central power. All along the west and north, from 
Exeter to Hereford, and from Hereford to York, the 
flame of revolt burst out anew. Finally William 
wandered to the north, crushed all opposition, and, 
by the merciless harrying of the country between the 
H umber and the Tees, placed a desert between his 
kingdom and the north of Britain. The north 
crushed, he turned his face westwards. In the depth 
of the winter of 1070 he left York with his army of 
destruction, and began an arduous march over moor- 



46 THE NORMAN CONQUEST 

land and mountain, covered with deep snow, towards 
Chester and the valley of the Dee. 

While the Norman conquest of England was 
proceeding, Bleddyn was trying to establish his 
power in Wales, no longer as the vassal of Harold, 
but as an independent prince. In the bitterly fought 
battle of Mechen he defeated the two sons of the 
great Griffith— Meredith fell in the battle, and Ithel 
perished from exhaustion and exposure soon after. 
In the same battle Bleddyn's brother, Rhiwallon, fell. 
Bleddyn thus became sole prince of Gwynedd and 
Powys. The southern parts, however, he had not 
been able to subdue. There ruled Meredith ab 
Owen, nephew of the Howel who had disputed the 
possession of the south with Griffith ap Lly welyn. 

Bleddyn was fairly secure in Powys by the time 
the Conqueror appeared at Chester, his exceedingly 
mild and gentle nature made him popular, and the 
energy with which he carried on any necessary war 
made men look upon him as a worthy successor of 
his great brother Griffith ap Llywelyn. But his 
power fell far short of that of Griffith. Over the 
south his supremacy was exceedingly shadowy ; and 
even Gwynedd was restless under the yoke of the less 
martial Powys. 

Bleddyn renewed Griffith's alliance with Mercia. 
He united his forces with those of Eadric the Wild, 
and, in the summer of 1067, ravaged the parts of 
Herefordshire that had submitted to the Normans. 
And later, he probably helped Eadric and the men of 
Chester to drive the Normans back from Shrewsbury. 

As the winter of 1070 wore on, Chester was the 



HUGH OF CHESTER 47 

only important town that had not been conquered by 
the Normans. Strongly fortified, retaining at least 
memories of its Roman greatness, the centre of the 
richest valley in Britain — it might well have served 
as the last rallying-point of united Mercian and 
Welsh resistance to the terrible king, who, with 
mutinous troops and savage determination, was 
painfully but surely approaching it. 

Chester fell, and the Norman conquest of England 
was complete. A merciless harrying of the surround- 
ing country, which drove thousands of fugitives 
southwards, struck terror into Mercia. The fall of 
Chester, which ended the conquest of England, was 
also the beginning of the conquest of Wales. The 
Norman keep which rose within it was entrusted for 
the moment to a Flemish castellan ; but its walls 
were soon to become the home of one who would 
carry conquest and devastation to the old homes of 
Maelgwn and Griffith. 

The Norman conquest greatly affected the relations 
between Wales and England. It crushed for ever its 
three old rivals — Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex ; 
it left England bereft of any lord strong enough to 
shake the king's throne. But along its borders were 
built castles to check inroads into England ; and 
within the castles were placed men who would 
conquer Wales for their own interest, and obey the 
king for fear of the Welsh. 

Chester is the natural starting-point for the con- 
quest of Wales north of the Berwyn and west of 
Snowdonia. As Avranches is the door to North 



48 THE NORMAN CONQUEST 

Brittany from Normandy, Chester is the door to North 
Wales from England. It was Hugh the Wolf, son 
of Richard of Avranches, that the Conqueror placed 
in Chester. 

With hereditary greed for Welsh land, Hugh 
turned to look at the fertile lands of the Dee and the 
Clwyd, and the history of his life is the history of 
brutal conquest and slaughter. He was generous to 
prodigality ; there was no limit to what he would 
givQ or to what he would take. He was surrounded 
by an army of bold plunderers like himself, who 
followed him with hawk and hound, or to harry his 
enemies' land or his own indiscriminately ; little 
recked he for those who tilled the land or those who 
sought the kingdom of heaven. Among the cruel 
licentious soldiers at Chester, a monk of Avranches 
tried to show from the Old Testament and the New, 
how soldiers ought to live ; his examples were 
mainly taken from the Old Testament, if we judge 
by results. 

Among the riotous band, two stand out among the 
others, pre-eminent in ability, if not in cruelty. The 
one was the Robert to whom Malpas, commanding 
the rich Cheshire plain, was entrusted ; and the other 
was the Robert who was to guide the conquest west- 
wards, until he established himself in the old home 
of Griffith ap Llywelyn at Rhuddlan, and in the home 
of the race of Maelgwn at Deganvvy. 

What Chester is to Gwynedd and the Dee, Shrews- 
bury is to Powys and the Upper Severn. For attack, 
for defence, and for consolidation, it is the natural 



ROGER OF SHREWSBURY ^Lf 

capital of Mid Wales. During the Norman period it 
is the most important place, from a military and from 
a political point of view, in the west. 

It was at Shrewsbury that William placed his 
ablest baron, to whom he had entrusted Normandy, 
while he himself was conquering England. Roger of 
Montgomery had little of the open brutality of the 
Wolf of Chester, he had ability to plot and to make 
use of men's passions that almost rose to statesman- 
ship. He loved unsettled borders, and times of 
rebellion of barons, and troubled waters generally. 
His monkish biographer evidently does not think 
that he was the worst then alive, for his wife was 
more wicked than he. Mabel, of the cursed house of 
Belesme, made up for her tiny stature by energy, un- 
scrupulousness, and cruelty. She protected a religious 
revival in order to hide her sins, she gave a feast in 
order to poison whom she would. With very great 
awe did men regard her, as they regarded poison or 
pestilence. Once, so it is related, she entered a wood- 
man's hut and gave her breast to the woodman's 
child, and the child died. 

What Chester has been to North Wales, what 
Shrewsbury has been to Mid Wales, Hereford has 
been to South Wales. Standing on the Wye, com- 
manding the entrance into the country of lovely 
valleys and bleak moorlands between Plinlimmon 
and the Black Mountains, it has had greater influence 
on Welsh history than any other English town. 
Here was placed William Fitz Osbern, the ablest 
soldier that had fought at Senlac. Of all the 

5 



50 THE NORMAN CONQUEST 

Normans he was the greatest oppressor ; ambitious 
he was of wealth and of power, and many did he ruin 
in building up his fortunes. The Isle of Wight was 
given him, but he turned with greater pleasure to 
Hereford — also part of the spoil that fell to him. 
The rich valley of the Wye lay around it ; and west- 
wards the dissensions of the Welsh princes made 
William Fitz Osbern look upon the hills and valleys 
of Brycheiniog, with Deheubarth and Ceredigion 
behind them, as an easy prey. 

The Norman conquest was rapidly extending to 
Wales. Robert's castle and town of Rhuddlan rose 
in the Vale of Clwyd, and from it the fastnesses of 
Gwynedd were threatened. Roger's castle of Mont- 
gomery looked down on the Upper Severn, and the 
whole of Powys lay open. Roger of Montgomery 
had already penetrated into Brycheiniog as an 
invader ; he had also entered Morgannwg as the ally 
of Caradoc, son of the Griffith who had destroyed 
Harold's hunting-lodge, and they slew Meredith ab 
Owen on the banks of Rhymney. Bleddyn could 
not look for support to Gwynedd or Deheubarth. 
Gwynedd tolerated his rule with barely disguised 
disaffection, and Deheubarth broke out into open 
rebellion. In that rebellion Bleddyn was slain by 
Rees ab Owen and the chieftains ofYstrad Towy. 
His death was followed by a struggle for power 
between his nephew Cynwric and his able cousin 
Trahaiarn. And, while the Normans were pressing on, 
a new claimant to the kingship of Wales appeared. 

It was not Bleddyn, the ally of Harold, that was to 



GRIFFITH AP CON AN 5 I 

stem the tide of Norman conquest in Wales. When 
Bleddyn died in 1075, there was in Ireland a young 
exile who had claims to the throne of Gwynedd. 
Forty years before, a half Danish, half Irish king, 
Abloyd, son of the rover Sihtric, had been driven 
from Dublin to the sea. In his wanderings he met 
another exile Conan, the heir of the old royal family 
of Gwynedd. Rhagvel, the daughter of the king of 
shores and islands, became Conan's wife ; and their son 
was the Griffith ap Conan who, on Bleddyn's death, 
summoned the men of Mon, of Arvon, and of Lleyn to 
meet him and his Irish host on the shore of the Menai. 
He traced his descent from Rhodri and Maelgwn, his 
ancestors wore red tunics ; he now demanded from 
the men of Gwynedd the vacant throne of his fathers. 

The men of Gwynedd hesitated. They were ruled 
by Cynwric, nephew of Bleddyn, and son of slain 
Rhiwallon. Meilir, Cynwric's brother, was prince 
of Powys. And these were now at peace with their 
powerful relative, the Trahaiarn, who, from little 
mountainous Arwystli, was rapidly extending his 
power over the whole of Wales. Besides, the 
Norman was beginning to threaten them in the 
north, Robert of Rhuddlan would not long be content 
with the Vale of Clwyd. 

Griffith sailed northwards, and appeared off the 
mouth of the Clwyd. A little inland, on the ruins of 
Griffith ap Llywelyn's home, rose the new stone 
castle of Robert, the advance post of the Norman 
Conquest. It was to Robert, whose inhuman cruelty 
was already proverbial, that Griffith came for aid. 
The inhabitants of the Vale of Clwyd knew the 



52 THE NORMAN CONQUEST 

stranger better than the Norman did — a wise woman, 
the widow of Griffith ap Llywelyn's servant, brought 
him his great namesake's tunic and prophesied he 
would be king. Sixty chosen soldiers followed him 
to his ship ; and he departed with Robert's surly 
blessing. The two men were to meet again under 
very different conditions. 

Griffith went back to Aber Menai. His Vale of 
Clwyd men were joined by the men of Mon. 
Cynwric was killed. Griffith took possession of 
Snowdon. He went on progress through the lands 
of his ancestors, and was joyfully received. He 
then turned south, and Trahaiarn met him at some 
spot in Meirionnydd called, after Griffith's victory, the 
Bloody Acre. Secure on the throne of Gwynedd, 
he drove Robert, cursing and slaughtering as he 
went, back to Rhuddlan ; and the Norman knew 
at last that a great king was to rise in Snowdon. 

Griffith, however, saw that it was easier to conquer 
than to rule. Dissensions arose between his Irish 
followers and his Welsh subjects, and the chieftains, 
accustomed to the rule of mild kings from distant 
Powys, resented the ready obedience which he 
claimed. Trahaiarn was invited to Gwynedd, and 
another battle was fought at Bron yr Erw. Later, 
men told how Griffith, sitting on horseback in the 
midst of his chosen soldiers, mowed his enemies 
down with his flashing sword. But numbers pre- 
vailed against him, his bravest Irish fell, he was 
hurried by a faithful man of Mon from the battle- 
field, and he again came as a fugitive to the Irish 
home of his youth. 



CjRiffith and rees meet 53 

He soon brought back a fleet of thirty ships over 
the deep, and the men of Snowdon again rose. But 
the pirates refused to fight because Griffith could 
not pay them, and they carried him back to sea 
against his will. Then miserable indeed was the 
state of Gwynedd. The Normans, led by Hugh the 
Wolf and Robert of Rhuddlan, carried fire and 
devastation through the length of the land to the 
end of Lleyn ; and Robert advanced from the Clwyd 
to the Conway, settling down on the old Deganwy 
from which Griffith's ancestors had ruled the giant 
mountains of Arvon and the peaceful fields of I\I6n. 
When Gwynedd again fell under Trahaiarn's rule it 
was waste and desolate, its people scattered and in 
exile. 

Griffith saw that Gwynedd was too exhausted to 
make another attempt. He gathered his sea-rovers 
and Irish around his little faithful Welsh army 
once more and determined to attack Trahaiarn 
from Dyved. From Ireland to Dyved was but a 
short day's sail, and a fair wind brought the little 
fleet safely to Forth Clais. To meet Griffith came 
the bishop and clergy of St. David's, and among 
them was a fugitive king, Rees ap Tudor, the heir 
of Deheubarth. 

Like Griffith himself, Rees was of the race of 
Maelgwn ; Griffith came from Anarawd, son of 
Rhodri ; Rees from Cadell, son of Rhodri. The 
home of Rees' family was Dynevor, which stands 
on a green knoll that rises abruptly from the lovely 
valley of the Towy. After the death of Bleddyn, 
the usurping over-king, the vengeance of Trahaiarn 



54 THE NORMAN CONQUEST 

had caused the flight of the royal race from Deheu- 
barth " Hke a timid hart fleeing before the dogs?' 
Among them was Rees ap Tudor, who spent some 
years in exile in Brittany. He had tried to regain 
his kingdom, and had to face an alliance of enemies 
— Meilir of Powys, Trahaiarn of Arwystli, and 
Caradoc of Gwent and Morgannwg. Threatened 
by all these, and seeing the Normans devastating 
one end of his kingdom and the Danes the other, 
he fled to St. David's. 

The two princes made common cause and marched 
against Trahaiarn. It was to be a struggle for 
supremacy between West Wales and East Wales — 
between Gwynedd and Deheubarth on the one 
hand, and Powys and Morgannwg on the other. 
Trahaiarn's forces hurried down, like the many 
streams from Plinlimmon, to meet the invaders, 
and somewhere in south Ceredigion, in 1079, the 
decisive battle of Mynydd Carn was fought. 

The two-edged battleaxes of the Danes, the long 
spears of the Irishmen, the irresistible march of the 
men of Gwynedd behind their shining shields, and 
the valour of Griffith himself, won the day. Tra- 
haiarn fell in the heat of battle, and the men of 
Powys and Gwent were thrown back. The moon 
rose on the hard-fought battlefield ; throughout the 
night and the morrow was the beaten army pursued. 

The battle of Mynydd Carn restored the race of 
Maelgwn, the ancient champions of the unity of 
Wales ; it decided that the Norman advance was to 
be opposed by the two exiles that came from Ireland 
and Brittany. 



BERNARD OF NEUFMARCHB 55 

At first the Norman advance seemed irresistible, 
and disaster after disaster met the princes of the 
restored royal race. 

A {qw years after the battle of Mynydd Carn, 
William the Conqueror went on pilgrimage to St. 
David's, passing through the fairest lands that had 
not yet been conquered. There is a good deal of 
mystery about his pilgrimage ; the Welsh chroniclers 
say he came to pray, the English chroniclers say he 
came to subdue. He probably founded a castle at 
Cardiff, from which another path of conquest was to 
lead westwards. 

Two things are certain : after William's journey 
Rees found it exceedingly difficult to rule the 
country through which he had passed ; and the tide 
of conquest turned strongly into the direction of 
his path. Rees had to waste his strength in quelling 
insurrections in Dyved, and his victory over his 
rebellious chieftains at St. Dogmel's was only won 
just in time to meet a more dangerous foe at the 
other end of his dominions. 

A certain Geoffrey of Neufmarche had been 
faithful to William the Conqueror. He had two 
sons — Dreux and Bernard. Dreux hesitatingly 
turned his attention to the other world ; Bernard 
turned with great determination to this. Eager for 
spoil, he came to the Conqueror, and the Conqueror 
told him of what he had seen in Wales. Before the 
death of the king Bernard came to Brycheiniog, and 
built him a castle at Talgarth on the Upper W^e. It 
is a land of pleasant pastures, surrounded by hills. 



$6 THE NORMAN CONQUEST 

Soon Bernard moved southwards ; about 1091 he 
crossed over to the valley of the Usk, and began 
to build a castle with ten towers, some square and 
some round, at Brecon. Rees immediately marched 
against Bernard, and fell in a decisive battJe. Despair 
came upon the men of the Deheubarth as they 
carried his body to the hallowed earth of St. David's. 

Griffith was more successful at first. He harried 
Arwystli, and even Powys, and then turned to the 
more difficult task of restoring order in Gwynedd. 
As the disappointed chiefs had appealed against 
his first attempt to Trahaiarn, they now appealed 
to the Norman earls of Chester and Shrewsbury. 
Griffith was invited to the Vale of Edeyrnion, and 
was there betrayed to Hugh of Chester and Hugh 
of Montgomery, who lay in ambush near Corwen. 
He was carried down to Chester, and as he disappears 
into his prison his biographer tells us what manner 
of man he was. Of medium height was Griffith ap 
Conan, with flaxen hair, and round, ruddy face. His 
prominent eyes, his fair eyebrows, and his goodly 
beard gave him a handsome and majestic appearance. 
His neck was round, his skin white. Mighty he was 
of limb, straight and fair to see. He was of passionate 
temper, cruel to his enemies, and ever the foremost in 
battle, but gentle and very merciful to his own was 
he. He knew learning and could speak eloquently 
in many languages. 

Now that Rees was dead and Griffith in prison, 
the Norman conquerors pressed on. Robert of 



CASTLES IN CEREDIGION AND DYVED 57 

Rhuddlan was building a castle at historic Deganwy. 
Hugh of Chester joined him, and the two Normans 
saw that, while the precipitous mountains of Arvon 
rose like a wall and prevented their further progress 
by land, the sea seemed to promise them an easy 
path to rich conquests. They crossed over to the 
nearest corner of Mon, and there they built the 
castle of Aberlleiniog, from which they could con- 
quer Mon at their will, or cross the Menai to Arvon 
and Lleyn. And then the men of Gwynedd realised 
that the Norman tyrant had set his foot among them. 
At Shrewsbury Roger and Mabel had a goodly 
family of sons and daughters. Some of them went 
abroad ; some of them took to religion ; four — 
Robert, Hugh, Arnulf, and Sybil — have an exceed- 
ingly important place in the history of Wales. 
While Hugh of Chester attacked Griffith's dominions 
in the north, Hugh of Montgomery turned south. 
Twenty years before he had ravaged Ceredigion. 
He now moved along the upper valley of the Severn, 
burst into Ceredigion, and followed the Teivy to the 
sea. A great castle rose at Cilgeran on the Teivy, 
to curb Ceredigion and to threaten Dyved. Arnulf 
crossed the hills to the valley of the Cleddau and 
took possession of the south of Dyved. To secure 
possession of this pleasant " garden of Wales " the 
castles of Carew and Pembroke were built. The 
power of the Montgomery family now extended 
from Shrewsbury, across Plinlimmon, right into the 
extreme south-west of Wales. The only exceptions 
were the cantrevs of St. David's and Cemmes. 
Soon Martin of Tours came by sea, defeated the 



CASTLES IN GIVENT AND MORGANNWG 59 

men of Cemmes, and another Norman castle rose 
at Newport. 

All this time Bernard of Neufmarche was not idle. 
It was well for him that William Fitz Osbern had 
been called away early to the continent, leaving 
him the Upper Wye as his undisputed spoil. He 
invaded the hills and moorlands of Elvel, and built 
the castle of Maesyved, pushing his boundaries 
northwards until Plinlimmon alone stood between 
him and Hugh of Montgomery. 

The richest spoil of all fell to other hands. Fitz 
Hamon's hereditary loyalty had been rewarded with 
the splendid gift of Gloucester, and before him 
lay the flat, rich lands of Gwent and Morgannwg as 
his natural prey. We know little for certain, though 
there is romance in plenty, about the conquest of 
Morgannwg, beyond the fact that it was exceedingly 
rapid, and that the conquered land soon became 
thickly dotted with Norman castles. Soon after the 
death of Rees ap Tudor, the whole of the vale of 
Glamorgan was Fitz Hamon's, from Cardiff Castle 
in the east to the new castle of Cenfig in the west. 
Subject to him were the Welsh who still held Miscin 
and Senghenydd, and the Normans whose castles 
rose in the rich vale — Pain of Turberville at Coyty, 
in the west of the vale, and Robert St. Quentin, 
whose castle of Llanbleddian and walled Cowbridge 
held the southern part. Subject to him also were the 
castle-builders who pushed westwards — the Richard 
of Granville who built Neath Castle in the vale of 
Neath, and the William of London who built the 
castle of Kidwelly on a hillock rising out of the 



6o 



THE NORMAN CONQUEST 



valley of the Gwendraeth. Beyond lay the Dyved 
in which were already rising the castles of the sons 
of Roger of Montgomery ; and their youngest sister, 
Sybil, was Fitz Hamon's wife. 

By about 1094 a line of Norman castles extended 
along the whole length of the south coast, from 
Chepstow to Pembroke. The only parts of Wales 
not conquered were the districts around Aberffraw in 
Gwynedd and around Dynevor in the Vale of Towy 
— the seats of the power of the two branches of the 
royal line of Maelgwn. 





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THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CONAN 



One day a man of Edeyrnion went to Chester to 
trade, and there he saw his king, Griffith ap Conan, 
in chains. It was a merry time in Chester, and the 
wards of port and wall were drunk. He took his 
king on his back, carried him safely home, and hid 
him until he was strong enough to walk. That is 
the way in which the Welsh believe that Griffith 
escaped from his captivity. 

Throughout the Norman period Griffith ap Conan 
is the great central figure in Welsh history. Others 
are more striking — Robert of Belesme, with his genius 
for castle building and his intimate knowledge of 
European politics ; Owen of Powys, alternately the 
creator of Welsh patriotism and its most daring 
enemy ; or Griffith ap Rees, equally magnificent in 
battle and eisteddvod. They move quickly and 
brilliantly across the scene ; Griffith's power re- 
mains, steady and abiding, like his own Snowdon. 

On his reappearance he carried on a guerilla war 
against Hugh the Wolf for some time, and then the 

63 



64 THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 

monks of Bardsey carried him from Aberdaron to 
Ireland. He came back with a fleet of twenty-three 
ships, and an army soon rallied around him. He 
attacked the Normans in Mon, driving them, fighting 
as they went, to their castle of Aberlleiniog. The 
castle was desperately defended, stones and arrows 
were showered on the besiegers, but the Welsh finally 
stormed it, and Mon was again free. 

Griffith then began to ravage the lands held by 
Robert of Rhuddlan. One hot day in July, as 
Robert was enjoying his noontide sleep at Deganwy, 
Griffith came with a few ships, and they cast anchor 
under the Great Orme's Head. When Robert awoke 
he saw the ships, full of his cattle, ready to put to 
sea. Shouting and cursing he snatched his shield, 
and ran down the steep, rocky bank to the seashore 
accompanied by one retainer only. He died like a 
wild boar, fighting to the last, pierced through and 
through by the Welshmen's spears. Griffith cut his 
head off and nailed it to the mast of his ship ; and 
then, within sight of the pursuing Normans, threw it 
into the sea. The headless body was taken to Robert's 
own country to be buried ; and Ordericus Vitalis 
wrote an eulogistic epitaph, not with a clear con- 
science, for he remembered what a godless life, full 
of reckless slaughter, the life of Robert had been. 

Griffith's deliverance of the country beyond the 
Conway was followed by his marriage with Angharad, 
the daughter of a chief of that country ; tall and 
stately was she, with fair hair and large blue eyes ; 
wise of counsel, very liberal of drink and food and 
alms. 



THE WELSH RISING 65 

Meanwhile, the revolt against the Normans was 
spreading from Dyved to Powys, along the long 
line of Montgomery possessions. Cadogan, son of 
Bleddyn, had stepped into Rees' place, and by 1094 
all the castles of Dyved had fallen, save Rhyd y 
Gors and Pembroke only, the last kept by the skill 
and artifice of its custodian, Gerald of Windsor. In 
1095 the castle of Montgomery was stormed, and 
Cadogan defeated with great slaughter an army of 
Normans that tried to retake it. 

The fall of Montgomery brought the Red King of 
England to Wales, but not on any pretence of pray- 
ing. It is true that the Welsh barons had risen with 
the others against his succession— Bernard of Neuf- 
marche had attacked faithful Worcester with an 
army of English and Welsh, and Robert of Rhudd- 
lan was among the barons reduced to dire straits, 
while the king and his English army besieged them 
in Rochester. But Griffith and Cadogan were be- 
coming too powerful, and the king came to his barons' 
aid. Two armies pierced to Snowdon in the early 
winter, ravaging as they went, but they were driven 
back by storms. Brycheiniog and Gwent rose ; and 
Pembroke, still under Gerald, was the only castle that 
held out in the west. We do not know how many 
times the king came, but the result was always the 
same, whether he came to St. David's or to Snowdon. 
The Welsh princes retired, with their property, before 
him ; and he could not blind or hang Griffith and 
Cadogan as he had blinded and hanged his own 
barons. Once he came to the quiet of St. David's, 
where the very birds were so tame that they did not 

6 



66 THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 

fly away from black-robed men. He stood on the 
rocks and looked at distant Ireland, vowing he would 
gather his ships and conquer that land. He was not 
the man to add to his resolution " if God will." 
England was now quiet, however ; the king did not 
fear that either of the two Hughs would become 
over mighty, and he left the task of carrying on the 
Welsh war to them. 

The war was carried on vigorously by Hugh of 
Chester and Red Hugh of Shrewsbury. Many of 
their chiefs revolted against Griffith and Cadogan 
after the misery of the long war, and in 1098 the 
two princes had to flee to Ireland before the two 
earls. The Normans again came to Mon, and 
Aberlleiniog was rebuilt. The people were treated 
with great cruelty — they were blinded and mutilated 
in a manner too inhuman to describe. Hugh of 
Chester housed his hounds in Llandyvrydog church, 
and by the morning, we are told, they were all mad. 
Soon rumours came that a strange fleet was coming, 
and the two earls watched daily at Deganwy. At 
last the fleet was sighted, approaching Mon — it was 
the fleet of the Norwegian Magnus. The earls 
crossed to Mon to meet it, and Hugh the Red, in full 
armour, rode along the sea shore arranging his men. 
An arrow came whizzing from the leading Norwegian 
ship, from the bow of Magnus himself, according to 
one account, and pierced Hugh's eye. His body was 
recovered at low tide and brought to Shrewsbury. 
And thus died the most courteous and the most 
amiable of a very turbulent family. Hugh of Chester 
retreated ; and Griffith and Cadogan were soon in 
possession of their own. 



ROBERT OF DELES ME 6/ 

Hugh of Chester, now corpulent and infirm, knew 
that death was approaching. He helped Henry I. to 
get the kingdom on the Red King's death ; and soon 
he took monk's habit and died. His son Roger was 
but seven years old, but the king allowed him to 
succeed, in spite of his youth. Nine years later 
Roger went down with the White Ship, when the 
king's only son was also drowned. 

Before his death, in 1099, the Red King had 
allowed Robert to succeed his brother Hugh as Earl 
of Shrewsbury. With the coming home of Robert of 
Belesme a new period begins in the relations between 
Welsh and Normans. The limits of the Norman 
conquest had been fixed — theirs was to be the eastern 
and southern slopes of the mountains ; while the west, 
protected by the half circle of Snowdon, the 
Berwyn, and Plinlimmon, was to remain Welsh. 
The Norman military superiority was disappearing 
too, for the Welsh had their stone castles and their 
coats of mail. 

Henceforth the aim of the Norman is to rule, and 
not to conquer ; the aim of the Welsh prince is to 
consolidate his power in peace. The relations 
between Norman and Welshman become less im- 
portant than the relations between each of them and 
the king of England. 

Robert of Belesme aimed at making Shrewsbury 
the capital of the west. The skill of his trained 
castle builders was used to strengthen its walls, and 
the fair town, on its hill in the bend of the Severn, 
rose majestically and defiantly, worthy in queenly 



68 THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 

beauty of the importance which the ambitious 
Norman meant to win for it. Behind it, Welsh princes 
and Norman earls were to be the subjects of its lord, 
and the western kingdom was to be in close alliance 
with the kings of Ireland. And the daring dream 
did not fall far short of success. 

Robert stood high above all the Normans of Wales ; 
his dominions, either directly under himself or under 
his brother Arnulf, extended from Shrewsbury to 
Pembroke, and he had no rival. He won the Welsh, 
and they looked to him, as they looked to their own 
prince, as one who " would make the land glad with 
freedom." Griffith ap Conan was restoring the 
prosperity of Gwynedd ; with Robert he had no 
quarrel, and he was glad to have a powerful earl 
between him and the king. 

With Powys, of which Shrewsbury was the old 
capital, Robert was more closely concerned. Of 
Bleddyn's many sons, three — Cadogan, lorwerth, 
and Meredith — were still very powerful. With all 
these Robert made a close alliance ; and so the 
mountains and fastnesses of Mid Wales, as well 
as its valleys, became securely his. Arnulf was 
busily gathering an army in Dyved and strengthen- 
ing his alliance with his father-in-law, Murtagh of 
Ireland ; Robert was diligently fortifying Bridg- 
north ; there was an ominous quiet throughout 
Wales. 

Robert's chief hope lay in the strength of his 
castles ; he knew that Henry could not keep an 
army in the field so far west while his throne was 
threatened by his brother Robert from Normandy. 



THE DEPARTURE OF ROBERT OF BELESME 69 

But 'd the Norman method of resistance failed, 
he could fall back on the Welsh method. He had 
entrusted his droves of cattle and much of his 
wealth to the sons of Bleddyn, so that they might 
be removed to the mountains if the barrier of castles 
was forced, and Henry would have to retire baffled as 
his brother William had done before. 

The king summoned Robert to his court at Easter, 
1 102; and, on his refusal to appear, immediately 
attacked his English castles of Arundel and Tickhill. 
He then led an army westwards, to close around 
Bridgnorth. The siege dragged on and the autumn 
was passing away. King Henry had none of his 
brother's stormy brutality, his ability lay in the 
direction of treachery, which bordered on meanness. 
He determined to detach Robert's allies. He chose 
lorwerth to work upon, and promised him a magni- 
ficent reward — Powys, Ceredigion, and half of Dyved, 
free from any oath or tax. lorwerth could not resist 
the temptation, and his men's memories of the injustice 
of Robert's father were strengthened, perhaps, by the 
fact that Robert's wealth was their certain prey. 

With the news of lorwerth's defection, Robert 
heard also that the sea-rovers had their own plans to 
carry out, and he saw his splendid prize disappearing. 
Bridgnorth fell, and the king was marching on 
Shrewsbury. Robert of Belesme surrendered, and 
was followed to exile by his brother Arnulf If a 
baron of such ability and ambition had been able to 
hold his position, the succeeding story of Wales 
would probably have been a very different one. A 
kingdom of the west, formed of Norman and Welsh 



JO THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 

elements, with Shewsbury as its capital, might have 
risen as a rival to the kingdom that had London as 
its capital. But the activity of Robert of Belesme 
was transferred, not of his own free will, to conti- 
nental politics, and a chronicler calls upon King 
Henry to rejoice, and upon all England to rejoice, 
because Robert of Belesme had been forced to leave 
the Severn valley. 

lorwerth soon found that the king had duped him. 
Henry divided Powys and Ceredigion between him 
and his brothers, and the royal Vale of Towy and 
Dyved were given to Normans, or to the Welsh 
rivals of the sons of Bleddyn. The brothers quarrelled, 
and lorwerth sent Meredith to the king's prison. 
When lorwerth claimed the fulfilment of the king's 
promise, he was summoned to Shrewsbury, sub- 
jected to a mock trial, and thrown into prison, there 
to repent at leisure for having put his trust in King 
Henry. When lorwerth disappeared into his English 
prison, the conquest recommenced. 

While lorwerth and Meredith were in their 
English prison, Griffith ap Conan and Cadogan 
found themselves supreme in the still unconquered 
parts of Wales. They knew Henry's power; and 
Cadogan was anxious, as Griffith had long been in 
the north, to be at peace with the king. Everything 
seemed to be making for peace at last. The young 
earl of Chester was no menace to Griffith ap Conan ; 
and, in the south, Gerald protected the Flemings of 
Dyved from his great castle of Pembroke, while 
Normans and Welsh were beginning to form one 



OWEN OF POWYS 7 1 

people in Morgannwg-. But the hope for peace 
disappeared on account of the fatal beauty of 
Nest 

King Henry had entrusted Pembroke to the 
Gerald who had once defended it so well. Now this 
Gerald's wife was the daughter of Rees ap Tudor, 
the last king of the Deheubarth, and was famous for 
her beauty. She had been the ward of Henry I. 
after her father's death, and had been deeply 
wronged. Gerald built a new castle at Cenarth, 
in the valley of the Teivy, and brought his wife and 
children to live there. Cadogan, the prince of Powys 
and Ceredigion, was in Ceredigion at the time ; and 
on Christmas Day he summoned his chieftains to a 
great feast for the honour of God. To the feast came 
Cadogan's son Owen, who had already been a fire- 
brand in Powys. He heard that his cousin Nest was 
in the new castle, and he paid her a visit. The same 
night he broke into the castle and carried Nest away. 
Gerald managed to escape with his bare life from the 
smouldering ruins of his new castle. 

Old Cadogan heard of his son's crime with abject 
terror. He tried to turn the wrath of the king away ; 
but Owen would not restore Nest. Cadogan's 
possessions were offered to his enemies, led by his 
nephew Madoc ; and he and Owen fled to Ireland, 
while even churches were burnt behind them. 

Cadogan bought Ceredigion back, on condition 
that Owen was not to come. Owen came, however, 
and entered into an alliance with Madoc, the two 
swearing perpetual fidelity to each other over relics, 
and immediately making a progress of indiscriminate 



72 THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 

plunder. It was easy for them to gather armies, and 
Henry became alarmed. He turned to his prisoner 
lorwerth, and offered him northern Powys on con- 
dition of maintaining peace — Meredith had already 
been given southern Powys. The three old princes 
tried to restore order, and appealed to their wild 
sons and nephews, showing the hopelessness of 
their revolt. But Owen and Madoc appealed partly 
to the old love of plunder, and partly to the new 
idea of patriotism, and in almost any part of their 
fathers' kingdom they found themselves able to raise 
an army. Finally, they raided Pembroke, with an 
army of young men from Ceredigion, and the com- 
plaints of the Flemings went to the king. Cadogan 
hastened to the king, and was kept as a prisoner, not 
in chains, he could wander whither he liked save in 
the direction of his own land. His Ceredigion was 
given to a Norman, Gilbert de Clare, who tried to 
keep his rebellious subjects in awe by building the 
castles of Aberystwith and Cardigan at each end 
of their country. 

Madoc and Owen fled to Ireland. Madoc soon 
came back, and claimed the protection of his uncle 
lorwerth in Powys. lorwerth dared not receive 
him, and Madoc became greatly embittered against 
the pacific policy of his uncles. While lorwerth 
was on progress in Powys, his house at Caereinion 
was set on fire, and the old prince was speared as 
he tried to escape from the flames. The king sent 
Cadogan to take his place, advising him to summon 
his son Owen from Ireland to help him. He soon, 
however, met his brother's fate ; Madoc and his 



AN ENGLISH INVASION 73 

outlaws were lying in wait for him, and he was 
attacked near Trallwm when alone, and killed. 

Well might a bishop think that the descendants 
of Bleddyn would murder each other. Meredith and 
his two nephews— Madoc and Owen — were given 
portions of Powys, and it was thought that the feud 
between Owen and Madoc would make it impossible 
for either of them to attack Gilbert in Ceredigion, or 
Gerald in Dyved. But Owen's ability and popularity 
soon made him master of the whole of Powys. He 
was looked upon as the champion of his country in 
the struggle against those who were trying to delete 
its very name. He executed savage justice on his 
father's murderer. Mountainous Arwystli as well as 
the whole of Powys became his, and Gilbert saw that 
Ceredigion would be his next conquest. 

At the same time the young earl of Chester — 
handsome and popular, but lacking his father's lust 
of conquest — was afraid of the steady, growing power 
of Griffith ap Conan. The two Welsh princes were 
becoming so powerful that Henry had to interfere, 
this time in order to save his barons. His army 
moved upon Wales in three divisions. One, under 
the earl of Cornwall, advanced from Morgannwg, 
now a land dotted with Norman castles. Another 
advanced from Chester, .under Alexander, son of the 
king of Scotland, and the young earl of Chester. 
The third, under the king himself, was evidently 
moving directly against Owen in the upper valley of 
the Severn. 

The danger was regarded by the Welsh with dis- 
may. They had suffered much during the hard 



74 THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 

winter, and from the scarcity and sickness that 
had followed. Many portents had been seen, the 
earth had trembled on the borders, and a comet had 
threatened Wales for three weeks in June. Old 
Meredith fled to the king of England before the 
evil day. 

Griffith ap Conan and his son Owen Gwynedd 
strengthened themselves in Snowdon. The Powysian 
chieftains sent their herds of cattle for safety to 
Gwynedd ; and Owen entered into an alliance with 
Griffith — neither was to make peace without the 
consent of the other. 

Henry's unwieldy army was closing around Snow- 
don. It was, however, in a poverty-stricken land ; 
winter was approaching, and a campaign against 
Griffith in the fastnesses of Gwynedd was very 
uncertain of success. Henry tried to detach the two 
allies from each other. Griffith stood firm ; but 
Owen, believing that Griffith had made peace on 
condition of exemption from tribute and castle, came 
to terms with the king. Henry was now in a position 
to dictate harder terms to Griffith ; and he then 
turned back, taking Owen with him, promising him 
the whole of a free Powys. The king took Owen 
with him to Normandy, and the generous and 
handsome Welsh prince soon became greatly 
attached to Henry the First. He ceased to be 
the leader of the Welsh defence against the 
Normans ; he ceased to be the representative of 
a patriotism that was soon to be chastened by 
suffering, and to be ennobled by the development of 
a national literature. Like his father and uncles, he 




DOOR OF ABERDARON CHURCH. 

{From a photograph by J . Thomas, Cambrian Gallery, Liverpool.) 



75 



76 THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 

became the willing vassal of the king of England, 
seeing the hopelessness of opposition to the Norman 
conquest, and looking to the king for protection. 

When Owen, the heir of the house of Bleddyn, had 
left Powys for the king's French wars, another took 
his place in the affections of his people. The heir of 
the house of Dynevor came to the Vale of Towy, 
and was immediately hailed as the representative of 
the new patriotism. 

When Rees ap Tudor fell in battle in 1093, his 
young son Griffith was taken by his kinsmen to Ireland 
for safety. Tired of exile he came back, living some- 
times with his sister Nest at Pembroke, sometimes in 
Gwynedd, at other times wandering from place to 
place. At last his youth no longer saved him from 
suspicion. The king was told that the minds of all 
the Britons were set on the young heir of the 
Deheubarth. 

Griffith fled to Griffith ap Conan with his kinsmen 
and foster brothers, one of whom was lame from a 
fall got in escaping from a Norman castle. They 
were all cordially welcomed ; but Griffith heard that 
the king was trying to bribe his host to surrender 
him, and he took sanctuary at Aberdaron. Thence he 
fled to the home of his father in the Vale of Towy, 
and was soon at the head of an army. He taught 
his people to believe that their country was not 
hopelessly lost when a Norman castle was built on 
it. He made the great forest of the Vale his head- 
quarters, and thither came a host, partly in the hope 
of plunder, partly in the hope of restoring British 



THE END OF OWEN OF POWYS J J 

rule. Narberth Castle was stormed. Then Llandovery, 
in the centre of the Vale ; Swansea, built by Henry 
de Bohemond above the little port ; and Carmarthen, 
important on account of its position and history, 
were attacked. The outer walls were scaled in each 
case ; but the keeps defied Griffith, and he had to 
leave them untaken, after much vain shooting with 
the longbow. 

While William of London fled from Kidwelly in 
sheer terror, Griffith burst into Ceredigion, and the 
country rose to meet him as one man. Soon his 
army closed around Aberystwyth, but the motley 
host was dispersed for the moment by the energy of 
the castellans. 

Henry determined to send Owen to Wales to 
unite Griffith's enemies against him. Owen came with 
an army to the Vale of Towy, and the inhabitants 
fled to the forest. On a dark night Owen and a few 
followers were lying in wait on the outskirts of the 
forest. A number of Welshmen emerged, and made 
their way towards Carmarthen. Owen gave chase, 
and caught them when they were near the walls, and 
plundered them. The fugitives fell in with a party 
of Flemings making their way to Carmarthen, led 
by Gerald of Pembroke, and told them that Owen ap 
Cadogan had just turned back. Gerald remembered 
old wrongs, and the Flemings immediately followed 
their old enemy Owen was proceeding leisurely 
through the darkness when the Flemings fell upon 
him. Arrows sped at random through the pitch- 
dark night, and Owen fell pierced by a shaft And 
thus endedj in that night skirmish, the man whom 



78 THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CONAN 

the Welsh had regarded as the champion of their 
freedom, and whom Henry the First had regarded 
as the means of ruHng Wales in peace. 

Wales was now divided between Griffith ap Conan, 
Meredith ap Bleddyn, and Griffith ap Rees, who ruled 
Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth respectively. 
Griffith ap Conan was older than the other two, his 
power was more strongly established than theirs, and 
he was looked upon by each of them as his protector. 
The king of England, having lost his only son in 
1 1 20, when the White Ship went down, was anxious 
to establish the peace necessary for the succession 
of his daughter Matilda. 

Meredith ruled Powys with great vigour. He had 
little of the gentleness of his brother Cadogan; he 
mercilessly destroyed his rebellious nephews. Twice 
the king of England led an army against him ; but 
his power continually grew. When he died in 1132, 
Powys was divided into north and south between his 
two sons, Madoc, the castle-builder, and Owen 
Cyveiliog, the poet prince. 

Meanwhile Griffith ap Rees' power was extending 
in the Deheubarth. In his great hall and councils 
at Cardigan, the splendour of his court recalled to 
men's minds the glory and the wide sway of his 
ancestors. He was strong on account of his alliance- 
with Griffith ap Conan, whose daughter Gwenllian 
he had married. On the death of Henry the First, 
Griffith ap Rees began to attack the Norman castles 
on his southern border. A league of the Norman 
barons was formed against him, and he hurried north- 



THE BATTLE OF CARDIGAN 79 

wards to get his father-in-law's help. During his 
absence, the barons, led by Maurice of London, 
crossed over from Kidwelly into the Vale of Towy. 
They were met by the heroic Gwenllian, who lost 
the battle and her life. Her brothers, Owen and 
Cadwaladr, moved southwards, with an army of six 
thousand footmen and two thousand mail-clad horse- 
men. On their way Griffith ap Rees, and all those 
who had attacked the Norman castles — chieftains of 
Ceredigion and Brycheiniog — joined them. The 
Flemings of Dyved, and the Normans of every castle 
from the Neath to the Dovey — the sons of Gerald of 
Pembroke among them — advanced to meet the Welsh 
army to the valley of the Teivy. The battle was 
fought at Cardigan. The Normans could not with- 
stand the charge of the Welsh, and were driven, a 
helpless mass of fugitives, to the bridge. The bridge 
broke under them, and great numbers were drowned. 
This battle was followed by the speedy reconquest of 
much of the land on which castles had been built. 

It was, however, the last victory of the two men 
who had checked the Norman conquest of Wales. 
In the next year, 1137, both Griffith ap Conan and 
Griffith ap Rees died. 

Griffith ap Rees is described by the chronicler as 
the " light and the strength and the gentleness of the 
men of the south " ; Griffith ap Conan as the 
" sovereign and protector and peacemaker of all 
Wales." The two princes left to their sons a well- 
defined kingdom and a policy of union. Griffith ap 
Conan's period of victories had been followed by a 
period of peace and consolidation ; the rover had 



8o 



THE WORK OF GRIFFITH AP CON AN 



turned statesman, and by patient labour had built up 
a kingdom which was ruled by his descendants until 
it was, a century and a half after his death, crushed 
by the mighty king of a consolidated England. 




VI 



THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 



The two sons of Griffith ap Conan — Cadwaladr 
and Owen Gwynedd — had worked together for the 
extension of their father's sway — especially over 
Meirionnydd and Ceredigion. When they were 
called upon to rule as well as to conquer, the 
difference between their characters became evident. 
Cadwaladr was brave to recklessness, and exceed- 
ingly popular among the younger men ; he thought 
of his father's victories, and wished to emulate them 
now that England was torn by the civil war between 
Stephen and Matilda. Owen was cautious, a born 
statesman as well as a born soldier ; and he thought 
of the success of the peace policy of his father. He 
aimed at increasing still further the prosperity of 
Gwynedd, and at maintaining that alliance with the 
house of Dynevor which, from the battle of Mynydd 
Carn to the battle of Cardigan, had been so dear to 
his father. 

The Normans were driven from Ceredigion, the 
two brothers crossed the Teivy, and, having taken 

7 



82 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

Carmarthen and Llanstephan, extended their sway to 
the Severn sea, separating the Normans of Govver 
from the Flemings of Dyved. The plans of Owen 
Gwynedd were quickly developed. His great aim 
was to unite Wales while England was full of the 
anarchy of the reign of Stephen. He himself 
remained at home in Gwynedd, as his father had 
done, to make it strong and prosperous. His more 
warlike brother, Cadwaladr, was given Meirionnydd 
and Ceredigion, the long maritime district, of 
uncertain allegiance and difficult to rule, which 
sometimes connected and sometimes separated the 
dominions of the two branches of the royal race. 
The union of Wales was to be completed by the 
marriage of Anarawd, the young son of Griffith ap 
Rees, to one of the daughters of Owen Gwynedd. 

Griffith ap Conan had made Gwynedd the pre- 
dominant power in Wales, his son Owen was to 
reduce the other districts to a kind of feudal 
dependence upon it. The old dream of the union of 
Wales seemed to be almost realised. Owen placed 
full confidence in his active brother's fidelity, the 
strong love between the two brothers had grown with 
every victory, and had never failed them when their 
aims were not the same. Owen's two sons, Howel 
and Conan, served him as faithfully and as success- 
fully as he and Cadwaladr had served his father. In 
the south the four young sons of Griffith ap Rees 
knew that the only way in which they could hold 
their father's possessions was by continuing their 
father's policy ; and they looked upon Owen Gwynedd, 
not only as an ally, but as their guide. 



cadvvaladr's crime 83 

As suddenly as ever a storm cfestroyed the peace 
of a bright morning in Eryri, Owen's vision of peace 
and union gave place to a reality of strife. Ten years, 
and more, of bitter struggle followed. As often 
happens in the history of Wales, when the patient 
and the wise policy of an able prince was on the 
point of securing a unity that every one desired, an 
untoward event, which no human wisdom could have 
foreseen, aroused the spirit of independence, and 
let loose the spirit of hatred and strife, through the 
length and the breadth of the land. 

Owen heard that Cadwaladr had killed Anarawd. 
The strife took place over a question of boundary, in 
1 143. It was an evil deed, and the horror it caused 
in the south was only equalled by the sorrow it 
caused in Owen's court. The popularity of young 
Anarawd — " he was the hope and the strength and 
the glory of the men of the south "■ — the trust he placed 
in the good faith of his northern kinsmen, and the fact 
that he was killed on the eve of his marriage with 
Owen's daughter, made Cadwaladr's hasty deed a 
cause of unreasoning anger as well as of wide- 
spread pity. 

Owen had to choose between his red-handed 
brother and the wronged young princes of the south, 
between Cadwaladr's policy of war and his own 
defeated peaceful purpose. He did not hesitate. 
He sent his sons to burn Cadwaladr's castle at 
Aberystwyth, and to dispossess him of all his land. 
Cadwaladr found that his brother's love had turned 
into hatred, and the discovery made him as deter- 
mined and reckless a traitor as he had been a faithful 



84 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

supporter. He brought a fleet of pirates to the 
Menai, and though he made peace with his brother in 
a fit of repentance, he found that he was no longer 
trusted. Driven out of Ceredigion as a murderer, 
hissed out of Mon as a traitor, his generous nature 
became rebelHous ; he brooded over fancied wrongs, 
and became a firebrand to kindle war between north 
and south, and between Wales and England. 

The barons on the eastern and southern borders 
took advantage of the strained relations between the 
lately united families of north and south. It was only 
by a great victory that the sons of Owen were able 
to save Melenydd from Hugh Mortimer. The sons 
of Griffith could not make head against the Normans 
of Pembroke and the south coast ; it was only by 
the help of the sons of Owen that they recovered 
Carmarthen, and the recovery of this important place 
was immediately followed by its siege, in which young 
Meredith ap Griffith greatly distinguished himself by 
his skilful defence of the castle. 

In 1 145, Owen's difficulties were great. In the 
north, the strong castle of Mold, which commanded 
the billowy cornlands of Flint and the easiest access 
from England to the heart of his kingdom, defied 
all his efforts. The encroachments of the border 
families in the east were becoming more and more 
difficult to check. In the south the sons of Griffith 
could hardly make head against the Norman lords 
now banded against them. And Cadwaladr had 
come again to Ceredigion, and had built a castle at 
Llan Rhystyd — a source of perpetual disunion right 
in the heart of Wales. Owen's hope was in his own 



THE SORROWS OF OWEN 85 

statesmanship and in the ability of his sons — the 
resourceful Hovvel, the warlike Conan, and his 
favourite Rhun. Once only did he lose heart entirely. 
It was when news was brought him that Rhun was 
dead. The whole country grieved with the stricken 
father for the popular young prince, whose blue, 
laughing eyes and golden curly hair are described by 
the chronicler, as well as his kindly wisdom in peace 
and courage in battle. His people thought that 
Owen Gwynedd would die of a broken heart, and 
feared that God would leave their country as a 
tempest-tossed rudderless vessel. 

The storming of Mold roused Owen Gwynedd from 
his lethargy again. With infinite patience he tried 
to realise the vision of unity and peace which he 
had inherited from his father, and which he almost 
realised at the beginning of his reign. His two sons 
drove Cadwaladr from Ceredigion into exile, and 
joined hands with the sons of Griffith in the south. 
Madoc ap Meredith of Powys extended his boundaries 
and built a castle at Oswestry ; but he could only 
hold his ground against Ranulph of Chester by the 
help of Owen Gwynedd. By 1152 Owen saw that 
his predominance in Wales was unchallenged, and 
that the unity of the country would be furthered by 
a renewal of the English attack. 

His success came too late. In 1 1 52 the war 
between the English king, Stephen, and the sup- 
porters of Matilda, daughter of Henry I., came to an 
end. In 11 54 Henry II. succeeded peacefully. His 
strong passions were guided by an iron will ; the 
experience of Stephen's reign had made him deter- 



86 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

mined to crush his barons. Owen Gwynedd, at the 
same time the possible protector of the march lords 
and a pretext for their growing military importance, 
stood in his way. 

In planning his first Welsh campaign, Henry II. 
followed the plans of William Rufus and Henry I. 
He meant to isolate Owen Gwynedd in the mountains 
of Snowdon, and to besiege him there. An army 
was to move along the north coast to Rhuddlan, and 
a fleet to precede it to Mon. While Henry's army 
was encamped on the marshy country on the western 
side of the Dee, near Chester, Owen drew up his 
forces on the hillocks around Basingwerk, to dispute 
Henry's passage towards Rhuddlan. The main body 
of Henry's army marched along the plain that skirts 
the north coast. But a picked body of men, with the 
king himself among them, tried to make a forced 
march through the woods of lal, in order to surprise 
Owen by an attack on his rear. On their march 
they were surprised themselves by Conan and 
Davydd, two of Owen's sons, and driven back in 
headlong flight, with great loss of life. Henry of 
Essex threw away the royal banner in his flight, and 
the king himself was in great danger. The cautious 
Owen refused to make a stand against the main body 
of the English army. He withdrew his forces to Cil 
Owen, and thence to Llwyn Pina — the English and 
the Welsh marching in parallel lines, and often facing 
each other. The English army toiled painfully over 
a sandy waste ; the Welsh held the hilly and wooded 
inland country. Many skirmishes took place, but no 
general engagement. Henry reached Rhuddlan and 



REES AP GRIFFITH Zy 

fortified it, but his position was an extremely pre- 
carious one. 

Meanwhile his fleet had fared badly. It had 
landed a force in Mon which began to rifle the 
churches. The exasperated peasantry hurled them- 
selves upon the invaders — most of them were 
slaughtered, many were drowned in trying to regain 
their ships, a few only were carried back by the 
fleet to Chester. Among the slain was Henry, the 
king's uncle, son of Henry I. by Nest of South 
Wales. He fell pierced by a lance, while leading the 
invading force. His brother, Robert Fitz Stephen, 
retreated, grievously wounded ; but he managed to 
reach his ship, to become, later, the pioneer of the 
first English conquest of Ireland. The successes of 
Owen Gwynedd, especially the victory over the 
invading force in Mon, were celebrated in perfect 
song by Gwalchmai. 

Henry made peace with Owen. He retained his 
hold on the Flint coast, and made Owen restore his 
lands to his brother Cadwaladr. He could now 
dictate terms to the other Welsh chieftains. Last 
of all to submit was Rees ap Griffith. His brothers 
had disappeared — Cadell had gone on pilgrimage 
and the able Meredith had died when twenty-five 
years old — and Rees had set his heart on reuniting 
the now scattered remnants of his father's lands. He 
retired, with all his flocks and men, to the dense 
forests of the Vale of Towy, and defied the king. 
When Henry threatened to lead against him the 
whole strength of England and Wales, he made 
peace very unwillingly. The king promised him 



88 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

compact cantrevs, but Rees soon saw that he only 
got a few beggarly remnants of the land granted 
so generously to English barons. 

As soon as peace was made, his English neigh- 
bours began to press on Rees. Roger, earl of Clare, 
came to Ceredigion in summer, and took possession 
of the whole country between the Wyre and the 
Dovey. From his castle at Llandovery, Walter 
Clifford ravaged Rees' own patrimony with fire and 
sword. Appeals to the king brought no redress. 
Einon, Griffith's nephew, rose in revolt in Ceredigion, 
and Rees again defied the king and drove the English 
barons away. In 1162 the king came again, and left 
Rees in possession of what he had won. No sooner 
had the king disappeared than Rees began to extend 
his sway over Dyved, and the castles built to protect 
the new Flemish settlers were quickly razed. On the 
advance of a great army led by the earl of Bristol, 
in which Cadwaladr and the sons of Owen also 
served, he retired to an inaccessible position, and the 
army of his enemies melted away 

Owen Gwynedd was not idle. The difficulties that 
surrounded him— the strength of frowning Rhuddlan 
and the disunion of Wales— had thrown him into one of 
those periods of mental agony bordering almost on des- 
pair which often preceded his greatest efforts. Taking 
advantage of the death of Madoc ap Meredith, prince 
of Powys, he appeared in the Upper Severn valley, 
and by getting possession of Cyveiliog and Arwystli, 
he strengthened his own borders as well as his 
connection with Rees ap Griffith. The conquest of 
Englefield brought Owen's dominions within sight of 



A UNITED RESISTANCE 89 

Chester, and Henry II. saw that a great effort must 
be made to crush him. 

When Henry came in 1157 he found no union 
among the Welsh princes ; Madoc ap Meredith of 
Powys was jealous of Gwynedd and England alike ; 
Rees ap Griffith had defied Owen Gwynedd as well 
as Henry II. ; Owen Gwynedd stood alone. By 
1 169, when Henry came again. Owen's diplomacy had 
been far more successful than his arms — he was now 
the chosen leader of all Wales, and Henry would 
have to crush, not a number of jealous chieftains 
as before, but what may almost be described as a 
nation. 

Henry took a new route. Instead of the old way 
along the coast, with its many possibilities of ambush, 
he took Oswestry as his base, and advanced along 
the fairly open valley of the Ceiriog, intending to 
cross the undulating Berwyn moorlands to the upper 
valley of the Dee — no difficult task in summer if 
the mountains are dry — and hence westwards to 
Snowdon. His army of mercenaries from Normandy 
and Flanders, Anjou and Gascony, was exceedingly 
large ; and the king expected much from the costly 
expedition — "the exile and the undoing of all the 
Britons." Owen summoned a great army to the 
valley of the Dee and encamped at Corwen, from 
which he could easily defend every access to 
Snowdon. With him was his brother Cadwaladr, 
no longer an ally of Henry. With him also was 
Owen Cyveiliog, the prince and poet of Powys, and 
all the chieftains of that harassed borderland. With 
him also was the Lord Rees ap Griffith, and all the 



THE SIEGE OF RHUDDLAN 9 1 

men of the south. There had never met an army 
so representative of the whole country as the army 
which Owen Gwynedd, after so many years of patient 
toil and deferred hope, saw encamped at Corwen. 

The king moved at a snail's pace. The wood in 
the valley of the Ceiriog had to be cleared. Every 
passage was disputed. Foraging was impossible ; 
communications were difficult to maintain. At last 
the king's army reached the open mountain. Rain 
fell in torrents, great storms swept over the exposed 
and dreary heights Wet, tired, and famishing, his 
great army was forced to retreat. Henry wreaked 
his anger on his helpless hostages — young sons of 
Owen and Rees- by blinding them. He marched to 
Chester, intending to enter Wales along the coast ; 
but he found it impossible to get a fleet to co- 
operate and to carry provisions for his army. 

On the departure of Henry, Owen and Rees 
separated. Rees went to his own land, and began 
to encroach on the English barons in Dyved. He 
took Cardigan, and repelled several attacks on the 
castle of Cilgeran, which guarded the lovely valley 
of the Teivy, and took prisoner Robert Fitz Stephen, 
whom he released shortly afterwards in order to 
enable him to lead the turbulent element in South 
Wales to the conquest of Ireland. Owen Gwynedd 
was equally active in recovering the castles of 
Prestatyn and Basingwerk. Then the two princes 
reunited their armies to enforce peace on the chiefs 
of Powys and to take the great fortress of Rhuddlan, 
in the siege of which Owen and Cadwaladr and Rees 
were engaged for three months. 



92 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

In November, 1169, Owen Gvvynedd died, and was 
buried in Bangor cathedral. In the spring of 1172 
died his brother, who had shared the glory of his 
youth and old age, and who had wrecked so many of 
his schemes. The two brothers were placed in the 
same grave. 

During his reign of thirty-two years, Owen 
Gwynedd successfully defended his father's realm, 
and anticipated that union of Wales which his 
grandson Llywelyn finally established. Like his 
father and grandson, he trusted more to his general- 
ship than to sheer fighting, and to diplomacy more 
than to either. He never ceased to long for peace ; 
and to a man of his melancholy temperament and 
loving nature, the religious and the literary revivals 
of the time were very attractive. He welcomed the 
Cistercians, and their monastery of Basingwerk was 
built near the scene of the most anxious moments of 
his reign. He was the hero of the second generation 
of patriotic poets ; Gwalchmai sang of his exploits, 
Cynddelw lamented his death. 

He introduced a feeling of greater humanity and 
chivalry into the wars of the period. The English 
invaders did not spai-e the Welsh churches — Hugh 
of Chester made an Anglesey church a kennel for 
his dogs, John burnt Bangor cathedral, and Henry II. 
ruthlessly desecrated churches and monasteries. Owen's 
light-armed scouts, enraged at the burning of some 
of the churches of Powys during the great expedition 
of Henry II., wished to retaliate. But the prince, 
with his usual wise moderation, said that neither they 
nor the more powerful English would gain by fighting 



THE LORD REES 93 

against God. When Henry II. was driven back by 
the storms, with his army in a piteous state, men saw 
in his discomfiture that God had wreaked vengeance 
on him, though Owen Gwynedd could not. 

Between the death of Owen Gwynedd and the rise 
of Llywelyn the Great, Davydd, Owen's son, tried to 
maintain a show of supremacy over the chiefs of 
Gwynedd. But, during this last quarter of the twelfth 
century, the central figure in Welsh history is not the 
lord of Snowdon, but the lord of the Vale of Towy 

Rees ap Griffith — the Lord Rees — had shown signs 
of ability and energy which promised to make his 
Debeubarth the most powerful state in Wales. His 
father, Griffith ap Rees, had died in 1137, leaving sons 
who could take full advantage of the anarchy of the 
reign of Stephen to recover their patrimony. With 
his elder brothers Cadell and Meredith, Rees attacked 
the castles which were rising rapidly around the 
Towy, and recovered much of the Vale of Towy, 
Dyved, and Ceredigion. In 11 58, however, he had 
to make peace with Henry II., the powerful successor 
of Stephen. He found that Henry did not keep faith, 
and that Walter Clifford and Roger de Clare had 
been placed, one in the valley of the Towy and the 
other in the valley of the Teivy, to encroach upon 
him. He threw himself heartily into an alliance with 
his uncle, Owen Gwynedd. He was at Corwen in the 
host that opposed Henry II.; he helped Owen to 
reduce Powys, and to besiege Rhuddlan. 

When Owen Gwynedd died, Rees inherited his 
policy. He tried to make peace with Henry II. in 



94 THE AGE OF OWEN GWVNEDD 

order to have a free hand to consolidate South Wales. 
The conquest of Ireland was attracting all the wild 
spirits, lured by lust of fighting, to follow castle 
builders into strange lands. When Robert Fitz 
Stephen and Maurice Fitz Gerald and Strongbow 
had led successive crowds of the half- Welsh Normans 
of Dyved into Ireland, the pressure on Rees became 
less. 

But the rise of a new power in Ireland was a 
menace to Henry II. When he passed through 
South Wales, hawk in hand, following the path of 
those who had gone to Ireland, the Lord Rees met 
him ; and king and lord came to terms. Rees had 
already shown what his aims were. He had rebuilt 
at Cardigan a strong castle of stone and mortar ; he 
had summoned Owen Cyveiliog to do him homage. 
The Lord Rees meant to rule South Wales from 
Cardigan, to be the overlord of Powys, and the ally 
of Gwynedd. 

In order to carry this policy out, the help of the 
king of England was indispensable. Rees helped 
Henry II. during the great revolt of the barons in 
1 1 74, and appeared, with his vassal chiefs, at the 
councils of the English king. Henry did not interfere 
with the steady extension of Rees' sway in Wales. 
At Rhaiadr a castle was built from which Owen 
Cyveiliog and Roger Mortimer could be watched. 
At Kidwelly, Rees took the castle from William 
Fitz Martin, the husband of his daughter Angharad. 
His power gradually extended over Dyved to the 
south-west ; castle after castle became his. He even 
took possession of Meirionnydd, beyond the Dovey, 



THE ALLIES OF REES 95 

but the sons of Conan ab Owen Gwynedd soon re- 
covered it. 

The chiefs of South Wales, from the heights of 
PHnHmmon to the mouth of the Usk, were his men, 
and he was followed to the councils of Henry II. by 
a host of powerful chieftains — his cousin Cadwallon 




CHEPSTOW CASTLE AND THE WYE. 

[From a drawing by Captain Batty.) 

ap Madoc of Melenydd, his sons-in-law of Elvel 
and Gwerthrynion, Morgan ap Caradoc ab lestyn of 
Glamorgan, lorwerth ab Owen of Caerleon, and Seisyll 
ap Dyvnwal of Gwent. This last chieftain had 
married Gladys, sister of the Lord Rees. 

The Lord Rees had interesting and dangerous 
neighbours. 



96 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

To the south, at Pembroke and in Gwent, the 
Clares held much land, and were hungering for more. 
They were of noble ancestry ; they were descendants, 
like Henry II., of Richard the Fearless. Gilbert de 
Clare, who died in 1114, had probably got possession 
of Chepstow, and was sent to take Ceredigion from 
Owen ap Cadogan. He renovated the castles be- 
tween the Teivy and the Ystwyth, and built the 
castle of Haverfordwest. His eldest son Richard 
was the ancestor of the earls of Gloucester ; the 
younger Gilbert became earl of Pembroke. This 
family was closely associated, then, with Pembroke 
and Ceredigion, and they were soon to be still more 
closely connected with Glamorgan. Richard de 
Clare, on his way from Chepstow to Ceredigion, was 
slain in an ambush by the Welsh in 11 35. He was 
followed by his two sons, Gilbert and Roger. Gilbert 
died in 11 52, and Roger became fifth earl of Clare. 
This Roger was the rival of the Lord Rees. He 
took possession of Ceredigion, and it was in saving 
South Wales from him that the Lord Rees rose to 
the position of ruler of the south. 

Roger's cousin, Richard de Clare of Pembroke, 
surnamed Strongbow, was conquering Ireland, and 
his marriage with Dermot's daughter, Eva, gave him 
the succession to a kingdom. His death in 1176 left 
his daughter Isabel, a child of three, the heiress of 
vast possessions in Wales and Ireland. In 11 89 
Richard I. gave her in marriage to William Marshall, 
one of his father's ministers, who became earl of 
Pembroke. 

Between the two branches of the Clares, William, 



THE MASSACRE AT ABERGAVENNY 97 

the son of Robert of Gloucester, held the lordship of 
Glamorgan, with Cardiff as its capital. Robert, earl 
of Gloucester, the natural son of Henry L, had 
obtained Glamorgan with Mabel, the heiress of Fitz 
Hamon. After his struggle with Stephen in favour 
of his sister Matilda, Robert of Gloucester died in 
1 147. He was an able statesman and a great patron 
of learning. The abbey of Margam was founded by 
him, and that of Neath by the chief baron of his 
lordship. 

In the upper valley of the Usk, William de Braose 
had inherited, through his grandmother, the extensive 
country conquered by Bernard of Neufmarche. His 
crimes have almost the grandeur of destructive 
tempests. The castle of Abergavenny, rising dark 
and menacing like the spirit of murder from the 
valley of the Usk, will always recall him to memory. 
To that castle he invited, in 1176, a number of the 
Welsh chiefs of the neighbourhood to confer in peace. 
Among them were Seisyll ap Dyvnwal, the chief of 
the Upper Gwent over which the castle looks. 
Suspecting nothing, Seisyll brought his little son 
Griffith with him. Ranulf Poer, sheriff of Hereford, 
gets the blame for the actual murder of the chiefs, 
but it had been planned by William de Braose. The 
slaughter was followed by an equally treacherous 
attack on the homes of the murdered chiefs. Gladys, 
sister of the Lord Rees, was taken, and her son 
Cadwaladr shared the fate of his brother. The 
dastardly deed, by which William de Braose had 
lured the best men of Gwent to their death in 
defiance of the sacredness of hospitality, made peace 

8 



98 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

between English and Welsh in Gwent impossible for 
many a long day. The sons of the slain chiefs swore 
that they would avenge their fathers. 

One day a young chief came to the murderer's castle 
and, pointing to a certain angle in the wall, said to 
the constable, " We will enter the castle at this point 
to-night." All night the garrison watched on the 
ramparts, and all was silent in the deep glen below. 
They did not know that the avengers of blood were 
concealed on the precipitous woody slope right under- 
neath. They retired to rest with the dawn, and soon 
learnt that their enemies were swarming over the wall. 
A traveller saw the Welshmen's arrows sticking 
through an oak door four inches thick. But no 
arrow had reached Ranulf Poer or William de Braose. 

A little later the two were superintending the 
building of a castle at Dingestow, on the other 
side of Gwent. The avengers stormed their half- 
finished walls. It was fortunate that a priest was near 
when a sword nearly decapitated Ranulf, to shrive 
hurriedly the guilty, departing soul. William de 
Braose was dragged from a deep trench into which 
he had fallen, but a rush of his own men saved him. 
It would have been better for him if his crimes and 
life had ended there. 

Rees fortified Rhaiadr twice, because the power of 
the Mortimer family was already making itself felt. 
Roger, lord of Wigmore, was beginning that course 
of expansion westwards which brought the Mortimers 
into Wales, to become finally the heirs to its crown. 

In Upper Powys, beyond Plinlimmon, Owen 
Cyveiliog watched the growing power of the Lord 



THE PRINCES OF POWYS 99 

Rees anxiously. " Whenever Owen Cyveiliog could 
oppose the Lord Rees," says a chronicler whose 
entire sympathy is with the great South Wales 
prince, " he opposed him." But, as long as Rees was 
at peace with the king of England, Owen Cyveiliog 
had no choice. Owen is praised by an ecclesiastic, 
even when under excommunication, for his political 
wisdom. The poet Cynddelw describes him as he 
appeared in battle, on a snow-white steed charging 
among the red steeds of Powys, rushing like boars 
on their enemy. He was surrounded by poets ; and 
he himself, in his poem to the Hirlas horn, describes 
the exploits of each Powys chief for whom the horn 
is filled in his court. 

In Lower Powys, between the Severn and the Dee, 
Griffith Maelor ruled where his wise father, Madoc ap 
Meredith, had held his own against the power of 
Gwynedd and the rapacity of the earls of Chester. 
The children of Madoc ap Meredith are famous in 
Welsh story. The beauty of Eva is sung by 
Cynddelw. White was she as the foam that is 
driven before the wind, lovely as the dawn, dazzling 
was her beauty as the snow on Epynt. Owen, the 
hero of bard and chronicler, was slain treacherously 
by the two sons of Owen Cyveiliog, his kinsmen. 
This caused a bitter feud between the young men of 
Lower Powys and Owen Cyveiliog. A preacher of 
the Crusades came by, and one stalwart youth, 
brandishing his lance, said, "I will not go until, with 
this lance, I shall have avenged the death of my 
lord." The once trusty lance was suddenly shivered 
to pieces in his hand by some invisible power. 
L.ofC. 



lOO THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

At Chester Randulf de Gernons, the son-in-law 
of Robert of Gloucester, and the uncle of Gilbert de 
Clare, was full of the old lust of conquest. His father, 
Randulf le Meschin, had become earl of Chester 
when his cousin went down in the White Ship. 
On his father's death in 1129, Randulph tried, by 
means of his Welsh troops, to get possession of 
Lincoln and Carlisle, the one valuable on account 
of its wealth and the other on account of its strategic 
importance. He joined Robert of Gloucester and 
Matilda, and he allowed his Welsh troops to sack 
Lincoln after the battle. He wavered between the 
two sides, keeping a steady eye on his own interest. 
He supported Henry H., and got Lancashire and 
Staffordshire as well as Cheshire. He had thought of 
the weak Powys and of divided Gwynedd too. But 
he died in 1 153, when at the height of his power. His 
possessions and projects were handed on to his son, 
Hugh Cyveiliog. Hugh revolted against Henry H., 
in 1 173, at Avranches, the old home of his family. 
He and his Bretons were shut up in the castle of Dol, 
where he was besieged by Henry in person. He 
made his peace with the king, however, and retained 
his great power at Chester. 

In Gwynedd the task of Davydd was to keep the 
peace among the chiefs, who were running riot after 
the removal of the strong hand of Owen Gwynedd. 
Among the chiefs, the wisest in counsel and the most 
skilful on the field of battle was Ednyved Vychan. 
His wife was Gwenllian, daughter of the Lord Rees. 

The courts of Owen Gwynedd, Madoc ap Meredith, 
and the Lord Rees are described by a brilliant cycle 



THE CARDIGAN EISTEDDFOD lOI 

of poets. Gwalchmai sings the praises of Owen, and 
bewails the death of Madoc. Llywarch ap Llywelyn 
describes the sons of Owen chiefly, and one charming 
ode describes the beauty of Gwenllian, grand-daughter 
of Owen, and daughter of the poet prince Howel. 
Cynddelw lavishes most of his odes on the two 
houses of Powys ; but, being the greatest poet of his 
day, he does not forget Owen Gwynedd and the Lord 
Rees. 

In 1 176, the year of the massacre of the chiefs of 
Gwent at Abergavenny, the Lord Rees held a great 
Eisteddvod at Cardigan. It had been proclaimed all 
through the country a year before it was held. There 
was a contest between poets, the prize being a chair. 
There was a contest for another chair between 
musicians — players of harp, violin, and flute. The 
chair given for music was won by the men of South 
Wales ; the chair given for poetry was won by the 
North Wales men. 

The proficiency of the Welsh of the twelfth century 
in music and alliterative poetry is enthusiastically 
described by Gerald. The three instruments of 
music were the harp, the crwth, and the pipe. There 
was a harp in every house, and it was the chief 
feature in the entertainment of guests. It was 
played delightfully ; most of the airs being in the 
minor key. Some of the most ancient of the Welsh 
airs, however, like " Nos Galan " (" New Year's Eve ") 
and " Hob y Deri " and " Glan Meddwdod Mwyn " 
(" The sweet verge of drunkenness ") are not at all 
plaintive. There was a national passion for singing ; 
the children being taught to sing from their infancy 



I02 THE AGE OF OWEN GWYNEDD 

The poems of the twelfth century, as well as Gerald's 
glowing description of the perfection of the bardic 
art, show that, in poetry as well as in music, the 
competition at the Lord Rees' great Eisteddvod must 
have been very keen. 

But many storms of war were to break over the 
country during the old age of the Lord Rees. His 
sons wished to enter upon a more aggressive policy, 
and the attempts of the old prince to restrain them 
was followed by a struggle between them, and by his 
own temporary imprisonment. But when, in 1196, 
Roger Mortimer and William de Braose began to 
encroach upon Elvel, the Lord Rees, like a lion 
aroused, scattered Mortimer's army, stormed Pain's 
Castle, and forced William de Braose to make terms. 
The chronicler probably wrote his vigorous account 
of the old chiefs last campaign in the new abbey he 
had founded for the Cistercians at Strata Florida. In 
the next year the same chronicler summons all his 
learning to his aid in order to bewail the death of the 
Lord Rees, " the head and the shield and the strength 
of the South and of all Wales." They buried him at 
St. David's. 

In the same year died Owen Cyveiliog, bequeathing 
his Powys and his astuteness to his son Gwenwynwyn. 
The bountiful Griffith Maelor had died a few years 
before. 

Hugh of Cyveiliog, earl of Chester, died in 1181. 
His son Randulf Blundeville connects the century 
of the Lord Rees with the century of the Llywelyns. 
He was the cousin of Simon de Montfort, and the 
husband of Constance, heiress of Brittany, widow of 



THE END OF A GENERATION IO3 

Geoffrey and mother of Arthur, the heir to the English 
Crown after the day of his grandfather, Henry 11. 

WilHam, Earl of Gloucester, died in 1183 ; and the 
lordship of Glamorgan was carried by his daughter 
Amicia to Richard de Clare. 

William de Braose was to see the new century, but 
he did not die the death of the just. By helping the 
new English king, John, he obtained permission to 
extend his boundaries in Elvel, but two such bad 
men understood each other too well. He was with 
John when Arthur died ; he had refused to have the 
custody of Arthur ; he knew instinctively what the 
fate of a child who stood between John and the 
throne would be. He got new castles in Wales in 
1206. But all at once, for some reason that still 
remains a mystery, John began to persecute him 
with unrelenting hate. John finally demanded 
hostages. Maude de St. Valerie, whose arrogant 
ambition was so heavily punished, knew what the 
fate of her children would be if entrusted to John. 
She persuaded her husband to refuse to send them. 
There was nothing but flight possible. Who would 
defy the angry king for love of William de Braose ? 
In the year of the Lord Rees' death one of William 
de Braose's most influential vassals — Trahaiarn 
Vychan, whose wife was niece to Rees — was on his 
way to his lord's court at Brecon. When he had 
reached Llangorse he was arrested and placed in 
irons. At Brecon he was dragged through the 
streets at the tails of horses, and then beheaded. 
The body was hanged by the feet, and so remained 
for three days. There was not a man through the 



104 '^^^ ^^^ ^^ OWEN GWYNEDD 

whole of Brycheiniog who would willingly draw a 
bow in defence of William de Braose after 1197. 
After many vicissitudes he died in exile, a beggar. 
His wife and eldest child suffered a still harder fate. 
They fell into the hands of John, who starved them 
to death in Windsor Castle. But other children were 
left, and their descendants have done much evil and 
some good. 

Before leaving the twelfth century, with its ex- 
tremes of good and evil, it will not be amiss, per- 
haps, to follow an archbishop and an author on a 
round of visits to princes and barons and bishops in 
Wales. 




VII 



A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 



The Lord Rees came to Radnor about Ash 
Wednesday in 1188, to welcome two priests into his 
kingdom. They came to tell him that Saladin had 
captured Jerusalem, and to persuade him to join 
the Crusaders, who were to wrest the tomb of the 
Saviour from the unbeliever. The elder was the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, He became very tired 
before the circuit of Wales was completed ; and once, 
exhausted by a climb over a difficult pass, he sat on 
an uprooted oak and declared that the nightingale 
was wiser than he — the nightingale never entered 
Wales. But Archbishop Baldwin had a more practical 
object than preaching a crusade. He wished to 
establish the authority of his see over the four 
Welsh dioceses ; and he could not celebrate mass 
in the four Welsh cathedrals by taking a shorter 
path than a journey around Wales. 

His companion was younger. Giraldus Cambrensis 
was now a man of forty, and was high in the favour 
of Henry II. He was born at Manorbier Castle — 



I06 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

still inhabited, and still one of the most pleasant 
spots on the South Wales coast. He inherited his 
keenness of observation and his practical ability from 
a Norman father, and his strong- likes and dislikes 
and lovable vanity from a Welsh mother. His 
relatives had conquered Ireland, and had held the 
see of St. David. He himself had studied at Paris, 
and had read his first book to appreciative and 
learned audiences at Oxford, whom he feasted in 
princely style. His bold bid for the bishopric of St. 
David's, his visit with Prince John to Ireland, his 
intimate knowledge of the court of Henry II. and 
of the princes of Wales, his vivid imagination and 
practical daring, fitted him for the great impossible 
task over which the strength of his life was spent. 
But now that task had not even taken shape in his 
mind. 

Of few countries are there descriptions so bright 
and charming as Gerald's description of Wales. 
Though full of bitter prejudices, and though his 
imagination was stronger than his conscience, he 
stands almost unrivalled among all the writers of 
the Middle Ages for his descriptions of character — 
national and individual. He might have become 
the historian of the Crusaders — the archbishop had 
suggested it. But though Giraldus followed Baldwin 
through Wales, he did not follow him into Palestine. 
The journey through Wales had no fatigue for his 
tall and stalwart body ; his interest in dogs and 
birds, and his love for the mysterious and half-pagan 
superstitions of his countrymen, brought him some 
new delight every day, and his vanity, the governing 



THE PREACHING OF THE CRUSADES IO7 

passion of his life, found a continuous triumph in the 
influence of his eloquence and the display of his 
nimble wit. The archbishop is relegated to a very 
secondary place. There is not much about Saladin, 
but the sprightly archdeacon and the Wales of the 
twelfth century appear before us in life-like reality. 

After the first crusading sermon preached by 
Baldwin in Wales, Giraldus first took the cross. He 
was followed by the bishop of St. David's. It was 
expected that Rees would follow their example. 
But, while making preparations, he took time to 
consider. His wife, Gwendolen, was to settle the 
question, and the Lord Rees did not go on crusade. 
His enthusiasm must have been considerably damped 
by certain canons of St. David's, brought into his 
presence by some of his chiefs, who besought him 
not to allow the English archbishop to proceed 
further, as his progress would involve present loss of 
honour and future difficulty to the Welsh Church. 
But Rees was too courteous to withdraw a welcome 
once given. 

Many of the younger men of the wild district 
around Radnor took the cross ; but whatever 
wonderful tales the archbishop could tell them about 
the adventures and the miracles of the crusades, they 
could tell him more wonderful stories of what 
happened in their immediate neighbourhood — how 
the son-in-law of Rees killed the buck-horned doe 
of Gwerthrynion, what happened to a lord who had 
spent a night with his hounds in the church of 
Llanavan, and what would happen to any one who 
touched the magic staff in St. Harmon, or tried 



I08 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

to steal the magic bell from Glasgwm, and how lakes 
can prophesy in Elvel. 

Leaving the bleak districts of Melenydd and Elvel, 
whose extensive sheep-runs were the scene of many 
a family feud, they crossed the Wye into Brycheiniog. 
In all the loveliness of early spring, with its arable 
lands and rich pastures sheltered by mountains from 
every blast, its fertile fields a picture of prosperity, 
its rivers teeming with salmon and trout and grayling, 
Brycheiniog appeared to Giraldus an ideal spot to 
live in. As archdeacon of Brecon, he had a house 
near the castle ; and here, he says in words whose 
modesty cover a world of vanity, contemplating the 
fleeting nature of things of this world and the eternity 
beyond, he envied not the wealth and the fame which 
were not for him. 

The superstitions of Brycheiniog he found as in- 
teresting as those of Elvel, its feuds more murderous. 
A boy tried to steal pigeons from a nest which a bird 
had made in the sanctuary of the church of Llanvaes, 
and found that his hand had become fixed to the 
stone on which it leaned. Giraldus had the tale from 
the lips of this very boy, then an old man ; and were 
not the marks of his five fingers still seen on the 
stone ? The hammered torque of St. Cynog no man 
dared swear falsely over ; even the gospels had not 
such terror for the mind of the Welshman who wished 
to swear falsely. The horn of St. Patrick, if you put 
your ear to the wider end, emitted a melodious sound, 
like that of a harp gently touched by the wind. But 
the strangest scene in the district happened at the 
beginning of August, at a solemn feast which was 



A SUPERSTITIOUS PEOPLE IO9 

held annually in memory of Eluned, one of the 
daughters of old Brychan Brycheiniog. The country 
folk filled the church and the churchyard, or marched 
in procession round the churchyard, led by one who 
sang. Suddenly they were strangely affected, men 
and girls alike. They fell down in a state of ecstasy, 
or jumped in frenzy ; and then began to imitate, with 
arms and legs, before the assembled multitude, what 
unlawful work they had done on feast-days. One 
man guided a plough, another goaded the oxen, 
chanting the rude plough-boy song of the district. 
One busily plied the craft of a tailor, another that 
of a tanner. In another place a girl, with arms ex- 
tended, drew the thread into a coil from the distaff. 
Another busily arranged the thread for the web, or 
threw the shuttle and wove. The mad actors of their 
unwilling confession were led to the altar, where they 
offered their oblations and recovered their senses. 

Mystery enshrouded the lake Savaddan, guarded 
by the green heights of the Beacons, among which 
imagination saw the chair of the great Arthur. Some 
time before, three men had passed the lake in winter 
— Milo, earl of Hereford, then lord of Brycheiniog ; 
Payn Fitz John, lord of Ewyas ; and Griffith ap Rees, 
the father of the Lord Rees who had met the arch- 
bishop and the archdeacon. They were returning 
from the king's court — Milo and Payn being king's 
councillors and possessing the rich districts around 
them, while young Griffith laid claim to all and owned 
very little. A flock of wild fowl on the lake reminded 
Milo of a Welsh tradition that the birds of Savaddan 
would sing at the command of the natural prince of 



no A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

the country. In order to draw from Griffith some 
talk about his innate nobility, he jocularly reminded 
him of the insight of the birds into innate royalty. 
" Thou now boldest that thou art the lord of this 
land," answered Griffith ; " do thou command them 
first." Milo commanded the birds to sing, but they 
did not. Payn made the same appeal to them, but 
in vain. Then Griffith dismounted, prayed as was 
his wont on the eve of battle, and gave his command 
to the birds. To the surprise of the retinue, and to 
the consternation of the two lords, the birds rose 
together, beating the water with their wings, and 
began to sing and to proclaim Griffith's innate right. 
When the tale was told to Henry II., he is said to 
have declared that, though the Welsh had not might 
on their side, yet had they right. 

Milo had obtained Brycheiniog as the dowry of 
his wife Sibyl, heiress of Bernard of Neufmarche, the 
Norman conqueror of the land, and his Welsh wife, 
Nesta. Of the iniquity of Nesta, Giraldus has much 
to say. He seems to have hated women in general, 
and Welshwomen in particular. It was the women 
who, at the end of every sermon, dissuaded the men 
from taking the cross. " Nor is it wonderful if a 
woman follows her innate evil bent. For it is written 
in Ecclesiastes, ' I have found one good man out of a 
thousand, but not one good woman.' " 

The lord of Brycheiniog who met Giraldus was 
William de Braose. His atrocious perfidy and evil 
deeds to God and man were well known to Giraldus. 
But he was a powerful neighbour, and he made much 
of the archdeacon, who passes cautiously over his 



THE MURDERER WILLIAM DE BRAOSE 



I I 



foulest deeds, and praises him because, whenever he 
did anything, he said, " Let this be done in the name 
of the Lord." The great number of such phrases 
which he introduced into his letters tired his secretaries 
and bored his correspondents ; but the former were 
paid a gold penny, in excess of their stipend, for the 
additional labour of making every letter end with the 
words, " by divine help." 

From Brycheiniog the two itinerant preachers and 




RUINS OF LLANTHONY ABBEY. 



their followers turned to the east, and took the narrow 
wooded defile at the other end of which, some fifty 
years before, Richard de Clare and Brian of the 
Island had met their death. Passing the narrow 
valley of the Honddu, in which the new walls of the 
abbey of Llanthony were rising, on their left, they 
emerged out of the district of ravines, and saw the 
glorious plain of Gwent opening out before them. 
At Abergavenny Giraldus remembered the treacherous 
massacre of the chiefs : he preferred to think it was 



112 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDL^VAL WALES 

the work of the dead Henry II. rather than that of 
the living WilHam de Braose, and abstains from 
describing it, lest bad men should think that crime 
succeeds. Their way now lay across the plain of 
Gwent. They turned their faces southwards towards 
Usk, with a vivid sense of the fame of the Gwent 
bowmen. A certain noble Arthen met them. The 
archbishop asked him, remembering how his preach- 
ing had been defeated by women, whether he would 
consult his wife before taking the cross ; and received 
an answer which greatly pleased him : " When man's 
work is to be done, woman's counsel is not to be 
asked." 

At Usk the bishop of Llandafif took the cross, 
and joined the company. Alexander, archdeacon of 
Bangor, told the Welsh what the archbishop wished 
to say. It was noticed that the sermon had most 
effect on the notorious murderers and robbers of the 
district. 

Leaving the noble forest of Dean on their left, 
famous even then for its iron as well as for its venison, 
they followed the Usk to Caerleon. Giraldus describes 
the Roman remains which recalled to him the glory 
of this City of the Legions when Arthur gave audience 
to Roman ambassadors within its palaces, and when 
it was the metropolitan see of the Church of Wales. 
Standing on the edge of the then undiscovered South 
Wales coalfield, he thought that many riches of 
nature, which will be brought to light by the skill 
and diligence of the future, lie hidden through the 
inattention of man. 

There was a prophet at Caerleon in Gerald's time. 



PROPHECIES 113 

His name was Meilir, and he could foretell events 
through the evil spirits which appeared to him. He 
could not read ; but where there was a false statement 
in a book he saw an evil spirit perched on it. When 
the evil spirits crowded upon him, the Gospel of St. 
John was placed on his bosom, and they disappeared 
like birds ; but if Geoffrey of Monmouth's " British 
History " was substituted, they immediately swarmed 
back in greater numbers, and sat on the book as well, 
and remained longer than before. 

As they crossed into Morgannwg at Newport, and 
turned westward, Gerald remembered how King 
Henry's horse was frightened on this road by the 
long horns that welcomed him in Gwynllwg, and 
how the Welsh saw wrath on the king's freckled face; 
and the sight of the strong castle of Cardiff reminded 
him of Ivor the Little's exploit, when the little man 
got over the walls of the castle on a dark night, full 
as it was of men-at-arms and guards and archers, and 
carried the earl of Gloucester, the mighty owner of 
the castle, away. 

Gerald continually sees the fulfilment of prophecy, 
of Merlin or of some more modern seer, and he often 
seems to be prophesying himself Passing the island 
of Barry, whence his family had taken its name, he 
describes sounds that come from a hole in one of 
the rocks on the coast of the island. If you put your 
ear to the hole, you heard the blowing of bellows and 
the ring of hammers on anvils and the roar of furnaces, 
as if many smiths were at work. The noises are not 
prophetic to his practical mind, however, of the time 
when pleasant Glamorgan should be a vast storehouse 

9 



114 ^ JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

of coal and iron, and Cardiff the third port in the 
world ; they were only the voice of the fury of the 
waves in the caverns underneath. 

On their course westwards the preachers of the 
Crusade passed the splendid and hospitable Margam, 
and they and their horses had great difficulty in 
crossing the quicksands between the Avon and the 
Neath, though Morgan, the prince of that country, 
was their guide. " It is a hard country," said one 
monk on the morrow. " It was much too soft yester- 
day," was the answer. 

They crossed into Gower, and the bishopric of St. 
David's, at Swansea, leaving Neath Abbey on the right. 
About this country again Giraldus had a tale to tell. He 
had been told it by his uncle, the bishop of St. David's, 
and the bishop had it from the hero of the tale. 

A schoolboy, Elidorus, was very fond of play, but 
not fond of work. He played truant. Two little 
men came to him and led him, through a dark 
passage, into a country underground — a country of 
rivers and meadows, woods and plains — but under a 
very subdued light. He was taken to the king's 
court, to teach the little fairy prince how to play. 
Very small were those men, but well-made, fair, and 
with long hair falling over their shoulders like that of 
women. Their horses and greyhounds were propor- 
tionately small. They had no oaths, for they hated 
lying. They had no open worship, being worshippers 
of truth. Sometimes they went up to Wales, and 
came back wondering at the ambition, the treachery, 
and the inconstancy of men. The mortal boy was 
allowed to come back to see his mother. On her 



CARMARTHEN II5 

iniquitous advice he tried to carry with him the 
golden ball with which the little prince played. He 
was caught by two fleet little fairy couriers on his 
mother's threshold, and the ball was taken from him. 
Never again did he find the path to that fairy Utopia. 
He had learnt the fairy language, which the bishop 
thought was very like Greek. It is, of a certainty, 
suspiciously like Welsh. 

They pressed on westwards, and reached Kidwelly, 
the castle of the Maurice of London who had defeated 
Gwenllian in battle, and whom his wife persuaded to 
believe that red deer attacked and devoured sheep. 
They reached the valley of the Towy ; and came to 
Carmarthen, the birthplace of the magician, Merlin. 
Its battered brick walls reminded the sojourners of 
the fierce strife that had waged around it ever since 
the Normans had seen the Towy. To their left lay 
the thick woods of the Cantrev Mawr, the home of 
the princes and of the independence of the south, 
with the castle of Dynevor rising from it. Gerald's 
pen could not describe, from sheer horror, the vin- 
dictive vengeance of the crown on the men of the 
commote of Caio, in this cantrev. On their way to 
Whitland, where the Welsh laws had been drawn up, 
they found the body of a young Welshman, murdered 
on his way to meet the archbishop. 

When they reached Haverfordwest, they found 
themselves among the new Flemish colonists — a race 
willing to dare any danger in pursuit of commerce, 
whose woollen factories ought to have been better 
protected by the king. Giraldus gives a flattering 
picture of them. They had been greatly affected by 
his sermon, though they understood not a word. 



Il6 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

From the hill-tops on their way to St. David's, 
Gerald caught glimpses of the pleasant land to the 
south of their path, the home of his youth. His 
mind first wandered to the castle on the rocky 
eminence of Pembroke, entrusted as a mere fortress 
of stakes and turf by Arnulf of Montgomery to 
Gerald of Windsor. Gerald made it impregnable, 
and brought up within it a progeny which retained 
the coast of South Wales and conquered Ireland. 
His wife was Nest, the beautiful daughter of Rees 
ap Tudor, and sister of the Griffith who had made 
the birds of Savaddan sing. She had been wronged 
by Henry I., and then given in marriage to the 
castellan of Pembroke. Giraldus Cambrensis was 
her grandson, and the Lord Rees, who had met him 
at Radnor, her nephew. 

Further south, in a sheltered nook on the south 
coast, lay the castle of Manorbier, where Giraldus 
had been born. The memories of childhood crowd 
upon him — the many turrets, the large fish- 
pond, the lovely orchard, the tall hazel trees, 
the mill and never-failing mill - stream, the ships 
scudding seawards before the east wind. One can, 
without believing his tales about weasels and demons, 
pardon him for believing that this lovely spot is the 
pleasantest in Wales. 

The myriad birds on the south Pembrokeshire 
sea cliffs, especially its large breed of falcons, 
reminded Gerald of what happened to Henry H., 
when he passed this way to Ireland. The king saw 
a falcon perched on a rock. He let loose a fine 
Norway hawk. The two birds rose higher and 



ST. DAVIDS 117 

higher together ; the end was that the king's hawk 
dropped dead at his feet. 

The procession of cross-marked churchmen came 
within sight of St. David's, in the extreme west of 
Wales. The bishop had accompanied them all the 
way from Radnor, and they found themselves in 
pleasant quarters. They saw the Vale of Roses, 
with no roses ; the jackdaws that were not afraid 
of men dressed in black ; the Llech Lavar, a stone 
which groaned when a corpse was carried over it. 
When Henry II. passed over it on his return from 
Ireland, a frantic woman called upon Llech Lavar to 
kill him, according to a prophecy of Merlin. The 
king walked over it and, finding himself alive, said, 
" Who will believe Merlin now ? " They saw the 
place from which William Rufus had seen the low 
green hills of Ireland, which he said he would 
conquer, without adding "If it is God's will." 

A day's journey to the north brought them to the 
monastery of St. Dogmels, where the Lord Rees 
entertained them. When they preached on the field 
overlooking the Teivy, Rees and his two most 
famous sons — Maelgwn and Griffith — were among 
their audience. The people seemed to take little 
interest in the Crusades ; what interested them was 
whether an English archbishop could heal diseases 
and work miracles. Giraldus saw that the Teivy 
was a noble river, and he describes how its salmon 
leapt and how its beavers built their dams. On its 
banks he saw steep Cilgeran, and on the other side 
Crug Mawr, the scene of Griffith's victory, the hill 
on which any armour left in the evening would be 
found broken in the morning. 



Il8 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

Following the Teivy they came to Lampeter, where 
sermons were preached by the archbishop and the 
archdeacon, and by the abbots of Whitland and 
Strata Florida. The Lord Rees and his two sons 
accompanied them. They spent the night at Strata 
Florida. Journeying northwards, with the Plinlimmon 
range on their right, they met another of the sons of 
Rees, Cynwrig. The young man, tall and handsome, 
with fair curly hair, and full of innate majesty, was 
yet but lightly attired for a prince. He wore a thin 
cioak and inner garment only ; his legs and feet were 
bare, though there were thorns and thistles in the 
Vale of Flowers. Now that the father and the 
three sons were together, the archbishop preached 
in earnest to them ; after a dispute between the 
brothers Maelgwn promised, on conditions remotely 
possible, that he would go. 

They then journeyed on, passing Llanddewi, 
famous in the history of St. David, and reached 
Llanbadarn, where they stayed the night. They 
found here a lay abbot ; they saw a man old in 
iniquity serving at the altar, and were told that 
the abbot had been seen coming to church with a 
spear in his hand. Gerald dissimulates his wrath. 

When on the morrow they came to the Dovey, the 
Lord Rees turned back, for this was the northern 
boundary of his dominions, and of the bishopric of 
St. David's. Before them lay Gwynedd and the 
bishopric of Bangor. They crossed the Dovey in a 
boat, and Maelgwn accompanied them. At Towyn 
on the following morning, a great-grandson and 
namesake of Griffith ap Conan, who ruled this district 



MUN I 19 

under his uncle Davydd, came to welcome them. 
On the way to Barmouth, Giraldus had the first 
glimpse of the towering mountains of North Wales. 
The mountains are so steep, he says, that shepherds 
can converse with each other from the various peaks ; 
if they agreed to meet, it would take them from 
morning till evening to do so. 

They travelled rapidly, noticing the lances of the 
men of Merioneth. They spent Palm Sunday at 
Nevin, and hurried on to Carnarvon and Bangor. 
The bishop entertained them well ; but was, by^ 
importunity rather than persuasion, forced to take 
the cross. From Bangor they crossed the Menai 
to Mon, where Rhodri, son of Owen, met them. 
Rhodri's sons sat on a rock while the archbishop 
preached ; but would not be persuaded, until misfor- 
tune befell them. Gerald saw the great fertility of 
the island, producing so much corn that it was called 
the " mother of Wales." He relates the wonders of 
the island — the stone which always returns of its own 
accord, though Hugh of Chester had once thrown it 
into the sea ; the church where Hugh of Shrewsbury 
had placed his dogs overnight, to find them all mad 
in the morning. He mentions how Magnus, standing 
on the prow of the first ship of his fleet, sent an 
arrow into Hugh of Shrewsbury's eye, and in savage 
triumph said about the prostrate earl, " Let him leap." 
He remembers that two of his own uncles fought in 
the island, leading the army which co-operated with 
the advance of Henry H. against Owen Gwynedd. 
The islet of Priestholm was then full of hermits and 
of mice. If there was discord among the saints the 



ON HENRY ILS PATH 121 

mice devoured their provisions. If this were true of 
all Wales, rare indeed would have been the feasts of 
the mice of all generations. 

Returning to Bangor, they were shown the double 
vault before the high altar in which Owen Gwynedd 
and his brother Cadwaladr had been buried. They 
took the dangerous path along the sea coast to the 
valley of the Conway. To their left towered the 
mountainous mass of Snowdon, and Gerald describes 
its wonders — its prolific pastures, the lake with a 
floating island, the lake with the one-eyed fish, and 
the fabulous eagle which sits periodically on a fatal 
stone to sharpen its beak in anticipation of the next 
war. They crossed the Conway under Deganwy, 
between the sea and the house of the Cistercian 
monks who had just reached the valley. When they 
reached the Vale of Clwyd, they were invited by 
Davydd, son of Owen Gwynedd, to stay at the great 
castle of Rhuddlan, w^hich had so often changed 
hands in the recent wars. Thence they visited St. 
Asaph, the only one of the Welsh cathedrals in 
which the archbishop had not celebrated mass. The 
Crusades had already been preached in the diocese 
of St. Asaph, so they hurried eastwards to Chester. 
They followed the road along which Henry II. had 
advanced and retreated, watched and harassed by 
Owen Gwynedd. They passed through a country 
rich in minerals, and spent a night at Basingwerk. 
The following day their way lay through dangerous 
quicksands, and they could see on their right the 
woody Coleshill, the scene of Henry II. 's reverse. 

After criticising the king's generalship, Gerald tells 



122 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

a story about a dog. A young Welshman had been 
killed, and his faithful greyhound kept watch near 
him for eight days, though famishing, defending the 
body from the dogs and wolves and birds of prey 
which followed the army. Its fidelity touched the 
English, and, out of respect for the dog, they gave 
the dead Welshman honourable burial. 

They crossed the Dee, the meandering of whose 
sacred waters was prophetic of the issue of the 
struggle between Wales and England, and spent 
Easter at Chester. They ate cheese made of the 
milk of the countess's tame deer, and heard that 
Harold lies buried at Chester, having escaped from 
the battle of Senlac. 

From Chester they turned south into Powys. The 
plain of Maelor was governed by Griffith, the vales 
and hills beyond by his uncle, Owen Cyveiliog. This 
rich country was famous for its breed of Spanish 
horses, introduced by Robert of Belesme. Griffith 
met them before they reached Oswestry. On their 
way from Oswestry to Shrewsbury they expected to 
see Owen Cyveiliog, the prince of Powys, famous as 
a poet and as a statesman. Alone among the princes 
of Wales, Owen Cyveiliog paid no attention to the 
archbishop. He was excommunicated ; but Gerald 
dwells on his genius and ability, his justice and 
wisdom and princely moderation. From Shrews- 
bury they pressed on to Wenlock, and, passing the 
prominent castle at Ludlow, they hurried through 
Leominster to Hereford, thus coming back to the 
point from which they had started. 

During their journey around Wales they persuaded 



A WELSH HOME 1 23 

about three thousand men, well skilled in the use of 
the bow and the lance, to take the cross. Unfortu- 
nately for Wales, fortunately for the countries which 
would have had to receive these enthusiastic vaga- 
bonds, arrangements for delivering their country from 
them fell through. The archbishop alone went to 
Palestine to see the crusading armies hungry and 
despairing, and to die in the pestilential camp around 
beleaguered Acre. 

What was a Welsh home like when the archbishop 
and the archdeacon approached it? The great hall rose 
among the cowsheds and sheepfolds. Its hospitable 
door was always open. "No one of this nation ever 
begs " ; the wayfarer lays his arms down at the door 
and enters as an honoured guest. Water is offered. 
If he allows his feet to be washed, he means to stay 
over night ; if he refuses, he wishes to partake of a 
meal only. In each family the harp was played, and 
this was the chief means of entertaining guests. 
The principal meal was prepared at sunset. The 
hall was strewn with fresh rushes. The guests 
and members of the family sat down in messes of 
three, and partook of thin oaten cakes, broth, and 
chopped meat from wooden bowls and trenchers. 
The host and hostess attended to the wants of 
every one, and themselves partook last. Towards 
evening the hall was laid out for sleeping. The beds 
were arranged around the walls — rushes covered with 
the coarse cloth manufactured in the country. In the 
middle of the hall the peat or wood fire burnt night 
and day — continuous like the life of the family itself. 



124 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

Barefoot and thinly clad, the Welsh were a hardy 
and a healthy race. Men and women alike wore 
their hair fairly short ; the men shaved all but a 
moustache. The women wore a white veil folded 
on their heads. In the Welsh romances and the 
Welsh poets the details of Gerald's picture are filled 
in ; Cynddelw describes the glass windows through 
which the beauty of the maidens of Powys shone 
upon him, in the Mabinogion there are many 
descriptions of chiefs' halls, sometimes draped in 
the mystery of magic, sometimes in the sober reality 
of every-day life, sometimes ruined and weather- 
beaten. 

Gerald's sympathies were not with the Welsh. 
He describes himself as equally connected by birth 
with them and with their conquerors ; it is his duty, 
and his delight, to describe their virtues and their 
failings with an unsparing hand. Their virtues are 
their frugality and hospitality, their quickness of 
understanding and ready wit, their delight in music 
and oratory, their reverence for tradition and religion, 
and their desperate bravery in the first rush of battle. 
Their faults are inconstancy, disregard of promises, 
bitter feuds, and flight when checked in battle. In 
describing marriage within prohibited degrees, 
Giraldus shows, not only a lack of sympathy, but 
a lack of knowledge. The exclusiveness which 
confined marriage within the families of the reigning 
class, however repugnant to an ecclesiastic who 
believed in the unreasonable mediaeval prohibition 
of the marriage of distant relatives, was the basis of 
the whole political system of the Wales of the period 



THE WELSH CHURCH 12$ 

of the princes. Among the princes of North Wales 
whom Gerald saw many were regarded by him as 
illegitimate. Among these was Davydd, son and 
successor of Owen Gwynedd, who entertained him 
at Rhuddlan ; for Davydd's father and mother, Owen 
and Christiana, were cousins. At this time Llywelyn 
was a youth of twelve. His father Griffith was a son 
of Owen Gwynedd, and legitimate even from Gerald's 
point of view ; but a disfigured broken nose was a 
blemish which excluded him from the Welsh throne. 
Davydd failed to rule in spite of his marriage with 
a sister of Henry H. Llywelyn succeeded in spite 
of his youth and apparently insuperable difficulties. 
Gerald, reflecting on the later glory of Llywelyn, saw 
in his success a proof of his own views with regard 
to the marriage of relatives. 

But, before Llywelyn the Great tried to place the 
political independence of Wales on a secure basis, 
Gerald himself, who had shown how the Welsh could 
be conquered and governed, became the champion of 
the independence of their church. Between 1198 
and 1204 he threw himself into a struggle for the 
independence of the Welsh Church. 

Wales, as a portion of the upper Roman province, 
ought to have been part of the archbishopric of York ; 
but the religious ascendancy of Canterbury gradually 
and silently followed the extension of English over- 
lordship. The Church of Wales took but a grudging 
part in the conversion of England to Christianity. It 
defied the growing power of Rome until 809, retaining 
its own method of tonsure and its own calculation of 



126 A JOURNEY ROUND MEDIEVAL WALES 

the date of Easter. Between its subjection to the 
Church of Rome and the Norman Conquest, indi- 
vidual bishops raised a weak voice occasionally 
against political oppression, but its lack of unity 
and organisation made the Church sadly incompe- 
tent to deal with the difficulties of those iron times. 
The Normans breathed into it the spirit of the 
monastic revival, but the revival was associated 
with the supremacy of Canterbury. From about 
iioo the English archbishop interferes. In 1198 
Gerald declared the independence of the Church of 
Wales, with St. David's, the church of its patron 
saint, as the seat of its archbishop. Three times he 
journeyed to Rome. With indomitable courage, and 
with the whole energy of his versatile genius, he 
appealed to Innocent III. to maintain the cause of 
the Church of Wales against Canterbury and John 
of England. 

Gerald failed, and the four Welsh dioceses became 
subject to Canterbury. His efforts were not, how- 
ever, without important results. He awoke the 
Welsh church to a consciousness of its unity. He 
taught the Welsh princes to appeal to the Pope as a 
great international protector of the just cause of the 
weak. He taught the Welsh princes to support the 
national church. Among those to whom he appealed 
were the Maelgwn and Rees he had met by Teivy 
side. Among them was also a younger prince, 
Llywelyn ap lorwerth, whose rapidly rising power 
was recognised by the keen-eyed ecclesiastic. 



VIII 



LLYWELYN THE GREAT 



Llywelyn the Great is the most important 
figure in mediaeval Welsh history. He combined the 
daring generalship of Cadwaladr with the cautious 
statesmanship of Owen Gwynedd. He enjoyed a 
very long reign, from 1 194 to 1240; and thus, for 
nearly half a century, Wales was spared the periodic 
reaction against centralisation, which followed every 
strong reign, and in which was discovered the prince 
best fitted to succeed. He watched one of the most 
interesting periods of English history, the period of 
the struggle between king and barons, which resulted 
in Magna Carta and its re-issues. He was a tower 
of strength to the barons, and three clauses in the 
great charter of English liberty describe his privileges 
and recognise the independence of the law he ad- 
ministered. It was his work in Wales that made 
Welsh chieftain and English baron alike regard him 
as Great ; it was his intimate knowledge of English 
politics and his diplomatic skill that made the Eng- 
lish historians give him that title. 



128 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

Between 1194 and 1201 he tried to secure himself 
on the throne of Gwynedd. His first difficulty was 
from members of his own family. His uncle Davydd 
was still supported by the English, and from his 
retirement In pleasant Ellesmere he watched every 
opportunity for regaining his kingdom. His cousins, 
rewarded with many of the provinces of Gwynedd, 
regarded the growth of Llywelyn's power with 
anxiety ; and Meredith ap Conan, who ruled re- 
belliously over wild Meirionnydd, found himself in 
Llywelyn's prison. 

From Powys and the South Llywelyn was jealously 
watched. Gwenwynwyn of Powys, whose tortuous 
policy gives so much of its picturesqueness and con- 
fusion to the reign of Llywelyn, had defied William 
Longchamp, who ruled over King Richard's realm ; 
Griffith had made the South the most powerful and 
aggressive province in Wales. Neither wished to see 
the revival and extension of the sovereignty of 
Gwynedd. 

Between 1201 and 1208 Llywelyn emerged out of 
many of his difficulties by his alliance with John. 
His marriage with Joan, the English king's daughter, 
cemented the alliance — unpopular in Wales, but 
necessary for the working out of Llywelyn's plans. 
Davydd was disarmed by the English alliance, and 
Llywelyn had no rival that he need fear. Gwen- 
wynwyn found himself between two powerful enemies, 
and saw John and Llywelyn closing around him. 
While Llywelyn overran Powys, John advanced to 
Shrewsbury and captured Gwenwynwyn himself. 
Llywelyn lost no time in consolidating Wales, while 



llywelyn's father-in-law 129 

protected on the east by John. Maelgwn ap Rees 
fled from Aberystwyth before him, and Llywelyn 
revived the alliance with the South by sharing 
Ceredigion with the sons of Rees ap Griffith. Having 
thus extended his dominions until they touched those 
of the sons of Rees, during the growing distrust of 
John, he marched northwards and attacked the 
castles, old and new, by means of which Ranulf 
of Chester tried to maintain his hold on the northern 
coast— Deganwy, Rhuddlan, Holywell, and Mold. 
John now saw that, for a vassal and son-in-law, 
Llywelyn was too powerful. 

Between 1208 and 12 12 Llywelyn had to make 
head against a determined attack by John. The 
king took advantage of the reaction against Lly- 
welyn's new consolidation, and formed a ring of 
enemies around him — the earl of Chester, the re- 
stored Gwenwynwyn and two of the sons of Rees — 
Maelgwn and Rees the Hoarse, who wished to get 
Ceredigion and Ystrad Towy by the king's help. 
The other two sons of Rees, Griffith and Owen, held 
the South in strong alliance with Llywelyn. 

John led his great motley host of English and 
Welsh along the coast from Chester. When he 
reached Deganwy, at Whitsuntide, he found that 
Llywelyn had removed all his flocks to the inac- 
cessible mountains that frowned before him. So 
great was the scarcity in the bare, devastated land 
that an ^^^ sold for a penny halfpenny, and horse- 
flesh was considered a rare delicacy. The king fell 
back, but came again in harvest time. He crossed 
the Conway at last and penetrated to Bangor. He 

10 



130 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

burnt the cathedral, and the bishop was only ran- 
somed for two hundred hawks. When he saw so 
great an army in the heart of his own country, 
harrying without mercy, Llywelyn sent Joan to make 
peace with her father on any terms. They were hard 
enough. Twenty thousand kine and all the land 
beyond the Conway formed part of what Llywelyn 
had to give. And soon the two sons of Rees who 
remained faithful to him had to make an equally 
humiliating peace. 

The triumph of John was but a momentary one. 
Llywelyn soon saw him deserted and betrayed by 
his late Welsh allies ; and he threw himself, between 
12 1 2 and 12 1 5, into the work of uniting and orga- 
nising the various elements of discontent. Every- 
thing seemed to favour him. Wales, lately so jealous 
and disunited, suddenly became united, and the 
chieftains summioned Llywelyn to lead them. They 
had discovered that John had conquered Wales for 
himself, not for them. From the king's castles the 
chiefs were ruled with a rod of iron, by barons whose 
policy was more tyrannical in its merciless mean- 
ness than that of their master. From Cardiff the 
seneschal could watch the gradual dispossessing 
of the sons of Rees. At Aberystwyth, Faulkes de 
Breaute, whose unscrupulous and godless daring 
was beginning to shock even the forsworn barons 
of that age, strengthened a castle which perpetuated 
the separation of North and South. From a new 
castle at Mathraval, the ancient home of the princes 
of Powys, Robert Vipont carried devastation, in the 
name of justice, to the fairest districts of the Severn 



THE GREAT CHARTER I3I 

and the Wye. Embittered by their disappointment, 
the repentant princes turned to Llywelyn. Gwen- 
wynwyn, Maelgwn, Rees the Hoarse, and all the 
chieftains of the border lands, appealed to him. 
Llywelyn found himself prince of all Wales, and his 
power greater than ever. The rage of the king 
knew no bounds. Robert Vipont hanged a little 
hostage at Shrewsbury, Maelgwn's son Rees, though 
the child was not seven years old. Later John 
wreaked his vengeance on Madoc, another son of 
the turbulent but suffering Maelgwn, whom he 
hanged with a number of the Welsh hostages. 

Civilisation seemed to be at a standstill during 
those years of misery and blind crime. No bell had 
tolled in Wales for five years, the energy of the 
Cistercians had turned into spiritual paralysis, and 
the curse of the Church lay on the harried land. 
In 1 21 2 Llywelyn entered into negotiations with 
Innocent III. The Pope released Llywelyn, Gwen- 
wynwyn, and Maelgwn from their allegiance to John, 
and the interdict was removed from Wales. The 
whole authority of the Church was now exercised 
in order to help Llywelyn to unite Wales and to 
attack John. 

Llywelyn's quarrel with John drove him back into 
an alliance with the English barons, and the king 
vainly tried to win his support. The barons pre- 
sented their claims to the king early in January, 
121 5, in a series of forty-nine articles, two of which 
claim redress of grievances for Llywelyn and the 
return of his son and other hostages. While the 
barons, on the king's vain attempts to put off their 



132 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

demands during the spring and eariy summer, were 
breaking out into open opposition, their ally Llywelyn 
marched on Shrewsbury, and was joined by the 
powerful bishop of Hereford and by many of the 
border barons. In Magna Carta, accepted by the 
king June 15, there are three clauses to protect the 
interests of I.lywelyn. The king promised to rein- 
state all Welshmen dispossessed of their lands or 
liberty illegally, and recognised that all disputes were 
to be decided by the law of England in England, by 
March law in the Marches, and by the law of Wales 
in Wales. 

His alliance with the barons enabled Llywelyn not 
only to unite the Welsh princes in a closer alliance 
than had ever been known before, but also to unite 
with them, by alliance or marriage, the border fami- 
lies with whom he had co-operated in securing the 
Great Charter. 

While Llywelyn and his allies had swept over the 
border lands, from the Dee to the Usk, Maelgwn ap 
Rees and his nephews overran Dyved, except Cemmes 
only ; and then, marching eastwards, all the castles 
to the south of their dominions, from Kidwelly to 
Senghenydd, fell before them. Llywelyn, followed 
by the chiefs of Gwynedd, and all the princes of 
Powys, came to their aid. The winter was mild and 
the campaign successful. Carmarthen surrendered, 
castle after castle in Dyved and Ceredigion were taken 
by his numerous army, the men of Cemmes swore 
fealty to him. When he turned back, Pembroke and 
Glamorgan alone — the one the stronghold of the 
Marshalls, the other the cherished possession of 



THE COUNCIL OF ABERDOVEY 1 33 

the powerful earls of Gloucester — had not been 
subdued. 

While in England the king and the barons were 
renewing their quarrel, Llywelyn tried to secure 
Wales against the frequent quarrels between princes, 
which made strength and prosperity impossible. So 
much land had been regained by Llywelyn and his 
host for the princes of the South, that private wars 
between the brothers Maelgwn and Rees the Hoarse 
and their young nephews, concerning the apportion- 
ing of them, were inevitable. Llywelyn tried to 
establish a council of princes, in which all dissensions 
between princes were to be settled. The first great 
council met at Aberdovey. The marshy valley, 
surrounded by mountains glowing with golden furze 
and purple heather, haunted by traditions of mystic 
bells and of the winged throne of ancient Maelgwn 
Gwynedd, was a fit meeting-place for such an 
assembly. From it the princes of Gwynedd and 
Powys and the South could see their own territories, 
and could almost converse while each stood on his 
own land. Llywelyn summoned all the princes 
before him as judges, and brought the wise men of 
Gwynedd as advisers. The South was parcelled out 
among the sons and grandsons of the Lord Rees ; 
and peace reigned over a land so often cursed by a 
war between kindred. 

What if any of the princes defied the decrees of 
Llywelyn's great council of princes? The most power- 
ful of them, the far-sighted Gwenwynwyn of Powys, 
soon did. He saw that the council perpetuated the 
supremacy of Gwynedd when its protection was no 



134 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

longer necessary ; he thought that King John, now at 
peace with Innocent, might eventually crush the barons. 
He threw off his allegiance to Llywelyn, and made 
his peace with John. Llywelyn tried every possible 
means to recall him to the community of Welsh 
princes, sent bishops and abbots to show him his 
written promises of alliance and allegiance. When 
all appeals had proved unavailing, Llywelyn again 
summoned the whole host of chiefs, from Mon to 
Gower. He marched into Powys and drove Gwen- 
wynwyn into helpless flight, taking all his land into 
his own hands. Each chief now knew that he could 
appeal to Llywelyn's council, or summon to his aid 
Llywelyn's army. 

Llywelyn tried to perpetuate the alliance with the 
English border barons, an alliance gradually giving 
place to allegiance. In the struggle for Magna 
Carta, he had found an ally in Giles, bishop of 
Hereford, head of the powerful house of Braose. On 
the death of the bishop, he made the alliance with 
his brother Reginald de Braose closer by giving him 
his daughter in marriage. Later on, he gave another 
daughter in marriage to Ralph Mortimer, head of 
the great family whose sway extended over the 
whole of the middle March. He also succeeded in 
turning the earl of Chester into an ally. 

Between the death of King John in October, 121 5, 
and the death of the younger William Marshall in 
1226, Llywelyn was engaged in a struggle with the 
Marshalls. He was the champion of the English 
barons against the Marshalls as the king's ministers, 
and the champion of his own chiefs against them as 



WILLIAM MARSHALL 1 35 

earls of Pembroke. Llywelyn the Great and William 
Marshall — both organisers, both great in council, both 
anxious to substitute compromise and arbitration for 
blind war — are the two most interesting figures of 
these times of great beginnings. The aim of William 
Marshall was to reconcile king and barons on the 
basis of the Great Charter which is still the first 
statute in the English Statute Book, the first limi- 
tation by statute of the king's arbitrary power. 
Before this reconciliation could take place, one of 
the two parties was to subdue the other. William 
Marshall desired the victory of the king, Llywelyn 
desired the victory of the barons. Had John lived, 
Llywelyn's plans would have succeeded. But, on 
the accession of the young king, Henry the Third, 
the barons found the French king an unpopular 
champion of their cause, William Marshall found 
himself able to appeal to the patriotism of the 
English, and the Welsh prince heard of the defeat of 
the barons and the French at Lincoln. 

William Marshall, one of the new ministers of 
Henry H., was well calculated to conciliate the 
young king and the barons. He himself had 
remained faithful to John, but his sons had been 
with the barons, and one of them had signed Magna 
Carta. Trusting the constitutional instincts of the 
wise and experienced councillor of the young king, 
and seeing that the king would eventually win, the 
barons began to make their peace with the boy king 
who was to rule according to Magna Carta. Among 
those who turned to the king was • Reginald de 
Braose, lord of Builth. 



136 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

The defection of Reginald immediately brought 
Llywelyn to the border, to help the sons of Rees. 
Builth was overrun, Brecon found resistance vain, 
the whole of Brycheiniog was occupied ; and then 
Llywelyn crossed the Black Mountains and en- 
camped in the upper valley of the Tawe. While the 
rich districts of Morgannwg and Gower and Dyved 
lay at his feet, Reginald de Braose came with six 
knights and renewed his allegiance. He had to be 
content with the single castle of Senghenydd, in the 
district ruled by Rees the Hoarse. Llywelyn turned 
westwards to Dyved, where the Flemings of Haver- 
fordwest swore allegiance to him. At the inter- 
cession of the bishop and clergy of St. David's, who 
came to meet Llywelyn, peace was made between 
the English and the Welsh in Dyved. Llywelyn 
was now on the border of William Marshall's land, 
and almost within sight of Pembroke. He had no 
wish to precipitate a quarrel with the Marshalls, but 
he set definite bounds to aggression in Dyved. After 
his return the alliance between the Welsh chiefs and 
English border barons was drawn closer by the 
marriage of Margaret, Llywelyn's daughter, with 
John de Braose ; and by the marriage of Rees the 
Hoarse with a daughter of Earl Clare. By this time, 
William Marshall had made peace in England ; and 
the great prince and the great earl, both shaping the 
policy of a new generation that was rising around 
them, found themselves face to face. 

The power of William Marshall was very great. 
He governed the policy of the king ; he could com- 
mand the whole strength of the kingdom. He had 



LLYWELYN AND THE MARS HALLS I 37 

vast Irish possessions, from which armies could be 
drawn. From the impregnable castle of Pembroke 
he could shape the destiny of England on the one 
hand and Ireland on the other. The conquerors of 
the fertile lands on the south coast of Wales looked 
to him as their natural protector against Llywelyn, 
who placed Welsh chiefs to rule over them, and 
against chiefs like Rees the Hoarse, who tried to 
regain all the land for his Welsh dependents. 
Though he himself was old, he had a goodly progeny 
of sons and daughters, who were to carry on his 
work with an enthusiasm that deserved better success, 
before the sons were laid to rest with their father in 
the Temple Church, and the daughters with their 
mother in the peaceful beauty of Tintern. It was 
inevitable that William Marshall and Llywelyn 
should be rivals in Wales : the English barons con- 
tinually claimed Llywelyn's support ; Llywelyn's 
chiefs often appealed to William Marshall. 

On the death of the elder Marshall in 12 19, his 
son, the younger William Marshall, became the 
representative of the king's power in Wales, and the 
centre of opposition to Llywelyn. The aggression 
in Dyved began again. Llywelyn summoned his 
princes, and in a rapid destructive march of five days 
he razed the castles of Narberth and Gwys- and burnt 
Haverfordwest. The war went on for five or six 
years ; sometimes Llywelyn would carry it within 
sight of Pembroke itself, sometimes William Mar- 
shall would recover even Carmarthen and Cardigan. 

The castles were no longer impregnable, their 
towers were battered by mangonels, their walls were 



138 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

undermined, and fierce assaults took the place of the 
old weary sieges. The burgesses suffered more 
severely, because, when a town was taken by assault, 
their merchandise became the spoils of the victor. 
Llywelyn, however, had no love for wanton destruc- 
tion. When he himself led a campaign in person, 
though he was one of the most skilled in the military 
engineering of the time, he preferred submission and 
a fine to the great loss of life and property involved 
in burning a town in order to take its castle. 

More potent than Llywelyn's skill in razing castles 
was the characteristic rapidity of his movements. 
His system of intelligence was perfect ; almost 
before the rebellion of a discontented vassal had 
taken shape, Llywelyn's army was on the march. 
By swift and certain punishment, he taught a gene- 
ration of faithless chiefs and perjured barons some- 
thing like his own veneration for solemn covenants. 
The rebellion of William de Braose was immediately 
followed by the loss of Builth, the defection of Rees 
the Hoarse brought him the immediate loss of 
Kidwelly, the turbulence of Llywelyn's own son 
Griffith was ruthlessly punished by the forfeiture 
of Meirionnydd. The discontented saw that upon 
fidelity to the great king depended their success, and 
that treachery, while bringing immediate ruin to 
them, increased his power ; for, though generous to 
the faithful, Llywelyn took into his own hands 
land that had been forfeited for treason. William 
Marshall could win victories on the borders of his 
own earldom, but no Welsh chief who appealed to 
him could he defend for a day against Llywelyn. 



llywelyn's love for diplomacy 139 

Though always successful in war, Llywelyn knew 
that his real strength was in diplomacy. He 
weakened the Marshalls by alliance with their 
English rivals, the earl of Chester, the Lacy family, 
and Faulkes de Breaute. When summoned to the 
king's court to Shrewsbury or Ludlow, in order that 
the war between him and the Marshalls might be 
brought to an end, he always went. He thought 
that he would be more powerful in the king's court 
than in isolated petty independence ; and not without 
reason, for he generally had the master reach, and 
his enemies were more afraid of him in council than 
on the battlefield. 

The change in the relations between the Marshalls 
and the Crown greatly helped Llywelyn. The war 
between him and William Marshall had become a 
war with the king of England. But Henry carried 
the war on with difficulty, if not unwillingly. 
Aimless campaigns, endless skirmishing, the building 
of an unfinished castle called Hubert's Folly, the 
continual ravaging by both armies of the border 
lands from Oswestry to Hereford, the renewal of 
Llywelyn's homage to the king and the continual 
increase of his power, were the chief results of the 
war. It was seen that the old dissensions between 
the king and the nobles were re-appearing. Henry 
admired the worth and ability of William Marshall, 
but he feared his power. He and his foreign 
advisers saw that he could not rule according to his 
own will as long as Hubert de Burgh, the repre- 
sentative of English insular patriotism, and William 
Marshall, the champion of Magna Carta, were 



140 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

allowed to direct his policy. Hubert de Burgh 
was accused, among other things, of plotting with 
Llywelyn, the old ally of the barons. William 
Marshall lost the king's favour ; and his brother 
Richard, who succeeded him on his death, broke out 
into open rebellion, and made common cause with 
Llywelyn. With the earl of Pembroke as his ally, 
Llywelyn could defy the king. They took the 
castles of Abergavenny and Cardiff, they defeated 
the king's army in a great battle at Grosmont ; and 
it was only by the heroism of its garrison and the 
timely arrival of the English fleet that Carmarthen, 
now the solitary castle remaining faithful to the king 
in Wales, was saved from being captured again by 
Llywelyn. 

But Llywelyn's mind was not bent now on the 
extension of his boundaries and the number of his 
victories. Through his long life of unbroken, ener- 
getic action he had longed for peace. Old age was 
now coming upon him: a palsied limb reminded him 
of the speedy close of his military career. The 
companions of his youth and manhood had died 
around him — some the heroes of his battles, others 
the hostages which had returned to him blinded. 
Joan his wife had died at his court at Aber — " Aber 
of the White Shells " — and had been buried in a new 
graveyard near the Menai, in the quiet repose of 
low-lying Mon, and within sight of the mountains 
among which she had shared Llywelyn's anxiety, 
and which she had once crossed to make peace 
between him and her father John. Maelgwn ap 
Rees, whom he had always trusted, and to whom he 



llywelyn's yearning for peace 141 

gave the most important castles of the South, had 
left a castle unfinished, and lay buried in the chapter 
house of Strata Florida. Rees the Hoarse, of more 
daring ambition and more chequered fidelity, had 
been laid to rest in the grave of his father, the Lord 
Rees, in far St. David's. Howel ap Griffith ap Conan, 
his kinsman and adviser, was buried in Llywelyn's 
new monastery at Aberconway. Maelgwn ap 
Cadwallon lay in the peaceful sanctuary of Cwm 
Hir. The two sons of Griffith — Rees of perennial 
youth and faithful Owen — had also been gathered to 
their fathers in the chapter house of Strata Florida. 
Of those who had surrounded Llywelyn in peaceful 
conclave at Aberdovey, there only remained the aged 
Meredith ap Robert, great of counsel in Cedewein. 

Llywelyn looked, with keen insight, into the future. 
He saw that the abiding power in England was that 
of the king. He saw that the barons could only 
limit his power when he ruled unwisely. He saw 
that, in Wales, a strong hand was necessary for the 
subjection of Welsh chiefs and border barons. He 
saw, above all things, the supreme necessity for 
peace. 

In spite of the number of his campaigns and his 
unfailing readiness to undertake them when neces- 
sary, Llywelyn's efforts to preserve peace had been 
unremitting. He struck so heavily, because all 
entreaties to his faithless chiefs had been unavailing, 
and because generous protection had been thrown 
away upon them. Like Owen Gwynedd before him, 
he realised that England, however weak and divided, 
was invincible ; the aim of his life had not been to 



142 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

throw himself into a hopeless struggle against the 
English king, but to develop the prosperity of his 
own country in peaceful amity. 

He had married daughters to the most powerful 
border families — to the Braose family, which ruled 
the southern portion of the borders ; to the Morti- 
mers, who ruled over the central portion ; and to the 
last earl of Chester, who held the northern Marches. 
He had fortified himself by an alliance with Scot- 
land ; he and Alexander had supported the barons 
who won the Great Charter. And, at the end of his 
life, he tried to secure for Wales the continuation of 
the peace he had introduced, by placing it in feudal 
dependence on the English king. Perpetual peace 
was to be established by treaty, and the prince of 
Wales was to support the king of England in any 
foreign war. The treaty was made through the 
bishops of Chester and Hereford, and Llywelyn 
made his chief nobles also parties to it. But many 
of them did not conceal their unwillingness. 

It was not easy for him to give away the semblance 
of Welsh independence, even in order to retain the 
reality of it. It involved the succession of Davydd. 
his son by an English mother, and the cousin of the 
king of England ; it involved the disinheriting of 
Griffith, born of a Welsh mother. Davydd was 
effeminate, Griffith was able and energetic ; his 
energy had to be curbed more than once by long 
confinement in his father's prison. Griffith had been 
entrusted with the command of the army ; Davydd 
figured in all pageants. Griffith represented the war 
policy into which Llywelyn was often drawn ; 



LLYWELYN' S LAST COUNCIL 1 43 

Davydd the peace policy for which he never ceased 
to yearn. 

The princes were summoned in harvest time, 1238, 
to the monastery of Strata Florida, nestling in a 
nook in green Plinlimmon, less grand than the scene 
of the earlier council, but more sacred, because it was 
the home of the Cistercians, and the hallowed restins:- 
place of the fathers of many of the chiefs who were 
summoned to this last council of the great prince. 
The aged leader asked the assembled chiefs to swear 
allegiance to Davydd as his successor. The oath 
was taken, for the will of Llywelyn was law. But 
the sympathy of many was with Griffith, and with his 
policy of hostile independence of England. 

Llywelyn could strike hard in the cause of justice 
and peace at the end of his reign, but he could not 
reconcile the two sons whose jealousy of each other 
was so fatal to the continuation of his plans. He 
retired to the Cistercian monastery he had founded 
by the Conway ; and there he died, April 1 1, 1240. 

Death hid from Llywelyn the Great the hopeless- 
ness of his plans. No greater policy had been formed 
by any Welsh prince : none had been followed more 
consistently or more energetically. But it was the 
grandeur of his own personality that gave its success 
a semblance of possibility. As soon as he was laid 
to rest at Aberconway, the English king and the 
Welsh chiefs discovered that his ideal, so real as long 
as his own presence was felt, had departed with him. 

The saddest fact in the story of Wales is the dis- 
appearance of the ideal of her greatest prince. It is 



144 LLYWELVN THE GREAT 

emphasised by contrast with the success of insti- 
tutions which owe their origin to the times, if not to 
the policy, of his worthless English father-in-law. 
In 1 21 3 John summoned a great council to Oxford 
which, after some years of abeyance, developed into 
the English Parliament ; in 1 215 Llywelyn summoned 
the chiefs of his country to a great council at Aber- 
dovey, which, after twenty-five years of brilliantly 
successful work, disappeared for ever. It is empha- 




STONE COFFIN OF LLYWELYN THE GREAT. 

{Removed to Gwydir Chapel at the dissolution of JMaenan Abbey. ) 

sised by contrast with the petty schemes and divided 
counsels which made Wales again a prey to its 
English invader, because, by swerving back to its 
old selfish jealousies, it deserved the loss of its inde- 
pendence. Everything that is mean or brutal or 
dishonourable in later Welsh history is made doubly 
sordid by contrast with the grandeur of Llywelyn's 
reign. The guilty conscience of a country which 
spurned the peace he had welcomed and the unity 



LLYWELYN S METHOD Of GOVERNMENT I45 

he had established, one may almost say, is seen in 
the oblivion to which his memory has been allowed 
to fall, in the neglected grave of Joan, and in the 
empty stone coffin of Llywelyn. 

The central idea of his policy was the great council 
of chiefs. It was to be a legislative, an executive, 
and a judicial body. It was to represent the unity 
of the country under one supreme prince of Wales. 
It was to sanction the actions of the prince, it was to 
decide who was to succeed him. It was to decide 
upon rival claims to land, it was to furnish the prince 
with an army to crush any chief who refused to abide 
by its decisions. In short, it was to put an end to the 
two chief causes of the weakness of Wales — disputes 
concerning the succession to the supreme power, and 
disputes between kindred chiefs about the partition 
of their land. During Llywelyn's reign, the council 
simply ratified the decrees of Llywelyn, but it might 
have been trained to take independent action under 
his successor. The best tribute to its success, as lone 
as Llywelyn lived, was the faithfulness of the best 
and ablest chiefs to the system of which it was the 
soul. 

The prince jealously guarded the settlement made 
by the council at Aberdovey. When he appealed to 
the chiefs for help against a recalcitrant member, or 
against an invader, not a man hung back. It was 
this spirit of discipline, even more than his mastery 
of the art of castle razing, that enabled Llywelyn to 
move so rapidly and to do so much in such short 
campaigns. 

Llywelyn, as a virtual representative of the chiefs, 
II 



146 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

was the strong arm of the law. Even at the end of 
his reign, with its thickening difficulties, no one 
thought that his arm was palsied. At one end of 
Wales, the Earl Clare let go his hold of a castle he 
had unjustly seized, from sheer terror of Llywelyn. 
At the other end Meredith ap Madoc, the grandson 
of Griffith Maelor, was deprived of all his lands for 
fratricide. 

Llywelyn sympathised with the belated attempt of 
Giraldus Cambrensis to regain the independence of 
the Welsh Church, but he does not seem to have 
tried to appoint bishops ; such an attempt would 
have brought him into open rupture with the Pope 
and with the king of England. Neither were 
bishops always men of peace : the fiery bishop of 
Bangor took a very independent political attitude 
during the closing years of Llywelyn's reign. But 
his sympathy with the new religious reformers was 
an active sympathy. Like his grandfather, he was 
a munificent patron of the Cistercians ; and it 
was among them, in the new monastery at Aber- 
conway, and not with his ancestors in Bangor 
Cathedral, that he was buried. He also welcomed 
the Mendicant Orders ; and built a priory for the 
Franciscans at Llan Vaes, in Mon, in honour of his 
wife, who had been buried there. 

While welcoming new sources of culture, Llywelyn 
was the bounteous patron of a brilliant generation of 
bards, whose jealousy of the monks and friars had 
been barely awakened. Cynddelw, the most majestic 
of the poets of the age, gives a spirited description of 
his battles ; most of the bards lay stress also on his 



THE INFLUENCE OF LLYWELYN lA^J 

courtesy and kindness, and especially on his appre- 
ciation of the poetic art. To Einion he is the 
generous patron of bards as well as the maintainer 
of peace in Wales ; to Elidir the " hawk of battle," 
with his extensive flight, is also the mild and merciful 
monarch ; and Davydd Benvras, in a masterly elegy, 
gives eloquent voice to the despair which the death 
of the " great leader of Wales " brought to the thought- 
ful men of the time. 

The monk, who despised the art and condemned 
the passion of the bard in the solitude of Strata 
Florida or Aberconway, though he had wasted all 
his pedantry over lesser men, seems hushed into 
silence by the death of Llywelyn, and to shrink from 
the task of describing his full and glorious reign. 

It is too sweeping an assertion to say that Llywelyn 
left no trace on the constitutional history of Wales. 
A chronicler who wrote before his reign, and a chroni- 
cler who wrote later, would look at the ever-changing 
crowd of princes from a different point of view. 
Before Llywelyn's time the Welsh land i5 a remnant 
of Britannia, the Welsh freemen the heirs of the 
Britons, the two marks of their ancient supremacy 
being their independence and their language. Every 
ambitious chief could appeal to the glorious " British 
name," not only as a precious heritage to be defended 
against attacks by the kings of England, but as an 
excuse for rebellion against any Welsh unity or over- 
lordship. An appeal to a traditional unity so vague 
and shadowy was practically an assertion of inde- 
pendence of any new unity. 



148 LLVWELYN THE GREAT 

From Llywelyn's time the despised name of Cymry, 
regarded a generation earlier as a term of reproach 
to express degeneracy, takes the place of the proud 
name of Britons. The old vague unity becomes 
definite and real. The chiefs no longer justified 
their independence and their aggression by their 
British descent ; their relations to Llywelyn were 
defined in charters solemnly attested, and which were 
shown them if they tried to regain their anarchic 
independence. They were now " princes of Cymru," 
members of Llywelyn's council, owing allegiance to 
their great Cymric chief. The name of Britain was 
still used by the bards, but only as a poetic name for 
the Wales over which Llywelyn ruled, and which his 
mighty host defended. 

Llywelyn had discovered what the natural boun- 
daries of Wales were. Partly from practical wisdom, 
and partly from the fatalism which had given its 
pathos to the life of his grandfather, Owen Gwynedd, 
and its charm to the song of his uncle Howel, he had 
given up the Celtic luxury of scheming against the 
inevitable. ' He had seen that mountain and plain 
remained, while race and language changed. The 
new unity was not a racial one, neither was it based 
on common language : it was simply territorial. The 
Flemish burgesses of Haverfordwest and the scions of 
the Norman conquerors of Buallt, as well as the pure- 
blooded chiefs of Eryri, swore allegiance to him. He 
was the patron of the English monks who refused 
a grave in their holy precincts to the purest of Welsh 
bards, and of the bards who thought that even a 
Cistercian monastery would be honoured by possess- 



A NEW UNITY 149 

ing- their crraves. He was the friend of the Welsh 



fc>' 



princes who found dehght in the bright imagination 
of artistic Gwalchmai, or in the neat suggestive 
phrases and quiet humour of a skilled narrator of 
the tales of Arthur. At the same time he was the 
friend of the Welshman Gerald, who, in interesting 
Latin, described the failures of his countrymen so 
vividly and so mercilessly. 

The new unity did not efface the old territorial 
divisions. This, indeed, would have been an impossi- 
bility. However often the cantrevs were divided, the 
commotes, of which the cantrevs were composed, were 
always given to chiefs of the same near kin, brothers 
or cousins. The commotes, though often re-distri- 
buted, were never divided. The cantrevs and the 
commotes were taken as units for the central admini- 
stration. Llywelyn neither interfered with the 
ordinary customs of the cantrevs, nor with the 
extraordinary privileges of some of them, defined 
as they were by unbroken development, and by the 
persistent traits of common kinship and peculiarity 
of dialect. By substituting a court of appeal for 
private war, he gave greater fixity to existing boun- 
daries. In one sense, local independence grew with 
the growth of the central power. Stormy revolutions 
gave place to the quiet development of law. 

The policy of Llywelyn is more modern than 
that of any native prince of Wales. He foresaw 
the eventual political fate of the country he had 
consolidated. Its strongly marked geographical 
configuration, the patriotism which redeemed the 
selfishness of his chiefs and united them even at 



150 LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

the sacrifice of lower interests, the unity of thought 
which made possible the strong and universal literary 
awakening of his time — all were proofs to him of the 
eternal independence of his land of mountains. On 
the other hand he saw it prone to internal strife, 
impatient of strong centralisation, perverse when 
stagnant, and ' rebellious when progressive. He saw 
that unity was impossible as long as any chief could 
appeal to a hostile king of England, and that the 
independence of Wales must be its independence as 
a part of a more extensive kingdom. The experience 
of his long reign, so full in its intensity and variety, 
had enabled him to see very far into the future. The 
Welsh opposition to his statesmanlike proposal to 
Henry HI. was as shortsighted as the English con- 
struction placed upon it was sordid. He had seen 
that the independence which is natural to Wales, and 
the unity which is natural to the islands of Britain, 
are not inconsistent. 

But to the Welsh and to the English mind of his 
day, the two ideas were mutually exclusive. His son 
Griffith believed that allegiance to England meant 
the destruction of the independence of Wales ; his 
son Davydd believed, at first at any rate, that the 
independence of Wales pre-supposed the unsleeping 
hostility of England. The policy of allegiance died 
with the childless Davydd •; the idea of independence 
was transmitted by the unfortunate Griffith as an 
impossible task to his son Llywelyn, and it died with 
him. 

But the ideas of Llywelyn were finally realised by 
a statesman who may be regarded as one of his 



A FINAL TRIUMPH I5I 

descendants. Llywelyn's daughter Gladys married 
Ralph Mortimer. Her descendant, well within the 
ninth generation, became the true heir to the throne 
of England and of Wales. In spite of Glendower's 
help, he did not get the throne. But his claim was 
carried by his sister Anne to the House of York. 
Elizabeth of York was the mother of Henry VHL, 
who gave Wales a new unity and a voice in the 
Parliament of England and Wales. But, before we 
look so far into the future, we must see what was 
done immediately after his death by Llywelyn's sons. 




IX 



THE FATE OF LLYWELYN'S IDEALS 



Davydd II., at his accession, determined to carry 
out his father's far-sighted policy. He was a mild 
and conciliatory man, but his insuperable difficulties 
forced him into extreme measures and sudden 
changes of policy. His brother Griffith, represent- 
ing the chiefs who wished complete independence of 
England, he regarded as the chief obstacle to his 
policy ; his chief help would be the support of his 
uncle, the king of England, who w^ould allow him to 
continue his father's strong rule in Wales. He em- 
bittered his brother in order to conciliate Henry III. 
and then he discovered that his faithless uncle had 
been plotting his own ruin from the beginning. 

It was in order that peace might be established 
between Wales and England that Llywelyn had 
passed over his eldest son, the warlike and im- 
petuous Griffith, and used his influence over his 
chiefs to accept the younger Davydd as their prince. 
Griffith had already rebelled against his father's 
policy, but he could find no following while 

153 



154 '^HE FATE OF LLYWELYN'S IDEALS 

Llywelyn ruled, and revolt was followed by a 
captivity of six weary years. Before the council 
of princes at Strata Florida, a conference between 
the two brothers had been arranged by Richard, 
bishop of Bangor. Griffith and his son were arrested 
on their way, and imprisoned in Criccieth Castle, 
standing on a rock that seems to rise gloomily from 
the very surge of the wild Irish sea. 

In May, 1241, " Davydd, and the barons of Wales," 
to quote the Welsh chronicler's new feudal terms, 
" came to Gloucester to become the men of the king, 
his uncle." The relations between king and prince 
were defined, and difficulties were to be adjusted by 
the legate Otto, the bishops of Worcester and 
Norwich, the earl of Cornwall, and John of Mon- 
mouth, who represented the king, and by the bishop 
of St. Asaph, Ednyved, and Einion, who represented 
Davydd. Davydd was thus represented by his 
father's trusted advisers, and he had good reasons 
for hoping that his father's policy had the sympathy 
of the legate and of the earl of Cornwall, the king's 
brother. 

Papal support and ties of relationship were but 
broken reeds, and Davydd's submission increased 
rather than diminished his difficulties. The appear- 
ance of Walter Marshall with an army in the valley 
of the Teivy, and .the departure of the legate Otto, 
followed almost immediately after the allegiance and 
the peace. 

The lonely prisoner on the rock of Criccieth had 
able and indefatigable supporters. Richard, bishop 
of Bangor, left Wales, excommunicating Davydd as 



A DOUBLE-MINDED KING 1 55 

he went, to plead Griffith's case before the king, 
Senena, the devoted wife of Griffith, united the 
opposition to Davydd, and negotiated with the king. 
The opposition to Davydd was twofold — the oppo- 
sition of the irreconcilable Welsh party, and the 
opposition of the border princes and barons, who 
feared the final ascendancy of Gwynedd, Roger of 
Monthaut, seneschal of Chester ; Griffith, son of 
Gwenwynwyn, prince of Powys ; Griffith ap Madoc, 
lord of Bromfield ; Ralph Mortimer, and others. 
Henry saw that he could play the two brothers 
against each other. He obtained a bond at Shrews- 
bury from Senena, acting on her husband's behalf. 
The claims of the two brothers were to be decided 
in court, according to Welsh law. In any case, 
Senena was to give his Majesty a rich reward ; in 
case she succeeded, there was to be an annual tribute 
of money, and oxen, and calves, and horses, peace 
with Davydd, and the suppression by Griffith of any 
Welsh noble who rose against the king. Senena's 
two young children were to be hostages to the king 
as soon as Griffith and his son Owen were set free. 

Henry marched towards Chester with a great army, 
and Senena and the princes of Powys thought that 
Griffith would be restored. The king, however, was 
willing to treat with Davydd. He reproached his 
nephew for his rigorous conduct towards his brother ; 
Davydd persuaded him to believe that, as long as 
Griffith was free, there could be no peace in Wales. 
Davydd — under excommunication, attacked by Powys, 
fearing a revolt in Gwynedd — had to make what terms 
he could. The bishop Howel promised, and the 



156 THE FATE OF LLYWELYN'S IDEALS 

soldier Ednyved swore, that their prince would fulfil 
the impossible conditions. Davydd followed the 
king to London, swore allegiance, and departed 
sorrowfully. Griffith with his wife and children 
were handed over to the king. 

Griffith simply exchanged his lonely Criccieth 
prison for the Tower of London, where he and his 
sons joined a number of Welsh hostages and captives. 
Davydd was now helpless indeed. Gwenwynwyn in 
Powys, the sons of Conan in Merioneth, were under 
the protection of the king ; the king also had 
possession of Griffith, whose cause he could espouse 
if Davydd attempted to move. 

On the 1st of March, 1244, Griffith tried to escape 
from his prison. He made a rope of the sheets, 
cloths, and tapestries within his chamber, and let 
himself down along it from the top of the Tower. 
He was a man of gigantic stature, and the rope broke 
when he had got about halfway down. His mangled 
body was found in the morning near the wall of the 
Tower. His death was a gain to Davydd. The king 
could no longer play the two brothers against each 
other ; and the mild Davydd had at last been driven 
to leave his father's policy, and to take up the policy 
of which Griffith had been the champion — open 
defiance of the English king. He appealed to the 
Pope on the ground of justice. 

When the Welsh prince's appeal came to Innocent 
IV., the Pope was at Genoa, where, after a mad gallop 
and a stormy voyage, he had taken refuge against 
the Emperor Frederick II. Himself the victim of 
a violated treaty, weak in the struggle of mighty 



A FAITHLESS POPE I 57 

elements around him, he possibly sympathised with 
the distant Welsh prince. He gave power to the 
abbots of Aberconway and Cymer to inquire into the 
accusation of breach of covenant, and to free Davydd 
from allegiance and excommunication alike. The 
two abbots summoned Henry to Caerwys, to state his 
case in the sacred calm of a church. 

A month later Innocent ordered two English bishops 
to reverse what the abbots had done. Davydd had 
to trust to the fortunes of unequal war. The appeal 
to his call to arms was very general, for the border 
barons had been oppressing their tenants grievously. 
Those who hung back were the prudent Griffith ap 
Madoc, the double-minded Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, 
and the warlike Morgan ap Howel. Davydd had 
time to punish them severely before the king's 
army came. 

In the height of the summer of 1245, Henry and 
his army reached the borders of Wales. Slowly, 
ravaging mercilessly, they reached Deganwy. The 
king rebuilt the castle, the work taking over two 
months, and his great army lived in tents or in 
the open around. Opposite them, over the broad 
Conway, towered the fastnesses of Gwynedd, the 
abbey of Aberconway nestling on a steep bank by 
the waterside. Winter was rapidly coming on ; and 
one day a ship from Ireland, with a cargo of wine and 
food, came into the river mouth. It ran ashore right 
beneath the castle ; and, when the tide turned, the 
famished and shivering army found that it could be 
reached from the Welsh side. Three hundred Welsh 
borderers crossed the river, and a sanguinary struggle 



158 THE FATE OF LLYWELYN's IDEALS 

between them and the Welsh of Gwynedd surged 
around the stranded ship. The loss of life was 
great on both sides ; but the invaders were finally 
driven into the river, and the Welsh set fire to the 
ship after taking possession of the greater part of its 
precious contents. The war became bitter and brutal 
on both sides. One day the king's army lost a 
hundred men or more ; the next they brought the 
gory heads of slain Welshmen into camp. The 
Welsh, on the other hand, enraged by the wanton 
destruction of the abbey and by the cold-blooded 
slaughter of those taken in battle, hanged their 
prisoners and threw their mangled remains into the 
Conway. 

The king trusted that Wales would be so wasted 
that famine would break the spirit of the people. 
Mon, the granary of Wales, had been wasted by 
the Irish ; the king had filled the saltpits of the Vale 
of Maelor ; the corn had rotted on the fields. 
Having - completed the desolation, he turned back, 
suspecting his brother of sympathising with Davydd, 
and leaving an extensive country strewn with 
the unburied bodies of his soldiers — postponing 
vengeance until spring came again. 

When spring came Davydd was dying. The 
mental agony caused by the change of policy, the 
belief that his uncle would observe no treaty, the 
sight of his country devastated by war and famine, 
the despair that accompanied the consciousness that 
he would be crushed in spite of the justice of his 
cause — all this overwhelmed him, and he left the 
sorrowful struggle to the sons of the brother whose 



THE DEATH OF DAVYDD 159 

great task he had usurped. He was carried from 
Aber to Aberconvvay, and placed in his father's 
grave. Two years later the body of his brother 
Griffith was brought by the abbots of Aberconway 
and Strata Florida, and laid to rest in the same 
spot, around which the death struggle of Wales was 
to sway for a few more years. 

On the death of Davydd there were three claimants 
of his thorny crown. The Welsh candidates were 
the sons of Griffith, especially the Owen who had 
shared his father's captivity, and the Llywelyn who 
had obtained possession of his lands in- the country 
between the Clwyd and the Dee. Red Owen, as 
soon as he heard of his uncle's death, fled homewards 
from his prison ; and the devastated, despairing Wales 
was divided between him and Llywelyn. But there 
were other candidates. 

One was Ralph Mortimer, who claimed by the 
right of his wife Gladys. Ralph died in the same 
year, leaving his estates and claim to his son Roger. 
Gladys lived ten years longer. 

The other was Edward, the king's son, a youth 
of eight years old. The king maintained that in 
accordance with the treaty with Senena, which he 
had never observed, the lands of Griffith were 
now his. He did not press his claim, however, to 
more than the lands which Griffith's son Llywelyn 
held. These, the good, rich cantrevs between the 
Dee and the Conway and the lands south of the 
Dovey, which had owned allegiance to Gwynedd, 
were granted to Edward. Over the Snowdon 
district Owen and Llywelyn ruled, having done 



l6o THE FATE OF LLYWELYN's IDEALS 

homage to the king, and having had their feudal 
service defined ; in the rest of Wales EngHsh 
lords and Welsh chieftains fought for lands and 
castles. A brief respite of peace restored pros- 
perity, after years of devastating wars, of heat in 
seed-time, and floods in harvest time. 

While Gvvynedd was renewing its strength, Owen 
and Davydd, sons of Griffith, saw that their brother 
Llywelyn was inore popular than they. In the 
prosperity of the early part of 'his reign, as in the 
sorrow of the latter part, Llywelyn's personality, like 
that of his grandfather, had a charm which gave him 
immediate influence. The revolt of bis two brothers 
was followed, after a single decisive battle, by the 
imprisonment of Owen and the flight of Davydd to 
the king of England. 

In 1255, Llywelyn ruled alone in Snowdon, 
and the eyes of all that were oppressed, in all 
parts of Wales, were turned to him. In 1256 
Edward came to Chester, to the earldom which 
had been given him two years earlier, to see his 
lands and castles in Gwynedd. Llywelyn and 
Edward may be said to have the same final aim 
— the subjection of chief and baron to the prince, 
who was to owe allegiance to the king of England. 
It was the ideal of Llywelyn the Great — the recon- 
ciliation of Welsh independence and British unity. 
The bitter war between the two princes, however, 
made one appear as the champion of independence 
only, the other as the champion of unity only. 

Sole ruler in Snowdon, with a compact and easily 
defended territory, with an army easily brought 



THE FOUR CANTREVS l6l 

together, Llywelyn saw the beginning of the new 
troubles between the king and his barons. He 
hoped to perpetuate the independence which his 
grandfather had estabHshed, and of which his uncle 
had despaired. Though the king of England had 
broken faith with his father, he never ceased to strive 
for peace with him. Towards Edward, on the 
other hand, he felt a jealousy that turned into hatred 
as he saw his own beloved cantrevs oppressed by the 
prince's officials. It was chiefly for possession of 
the four cantrevs that the struggle between Edward 
and Llywelyn went on to the last. They are the 
country of hills and dales between the Conway and 
the estuary of the Dee. Rhos, with its billowy low- 
lands, contains Deganwy ; Rhuvoniog contains the 
upland pastures of Hiraethog and Denbigh ; Dyffryn 
Clwyd is the rich arable land around Ruthin ; 
Tegeingl is the mineral district between the Clwyd 
and the Dee, and has Rhuddlan in it. 

The young earl, for Edward was only sixteen when 
appointed, ruled the cantrevs by means of rapacious 
officials and a horde of brutal soldiers. An English 
historian describes them — while Edward was pleading 
with his uncle Richard at Wallingford for help against 
the Welsh, his hungry followers broke into a priory 
hard by, pushed the monks aside, and lorded it over 
their servants, crowding into the refectory to eat and 
into the dormitory to drink. If they dared to behave 
in such a manner in an English priory, one can 
imagine how they ruled over defenceless Welsh 
homes. The earl's deputy was Geoffrey Langley, 
whose treacherous meanness and unscrupulous 

12 



1 62 THE FATE OF LLYWELYN'S IDEALS 

rapacity had caused him to be hissed out of 
England and out of Scotland. He had played the 
spy on the man to whom he owed his promotion, the 
charmer who had fondled a snake. He was sent to 
inquire into offences against the forest laws ; the 
amount of money he wrung out of offenders was the 
wonder of the time, his high-handed brutality in the 
north of England made him as hated as he was 
feared — the only argument he knew was force, and 
a stray fawn or hare he made the cause of the ruin 
of men of noble birth. As marshal of the king's 
household, he won the king's ear by flattery, and 
made mean parsimony the characteristic of the royal 
table. To the joy of the English, he was sent to 
Scotland as adviser to the queen, Henry's daughter ; 
but the Scotch nobles soon sent him back. He then 
entered the service of Edward ; and it was from his 
brutal and dishonest administration that the Welsh 
of the four cantrevs obtained their first impressions 
of the rule of an English prince. New burdens, 
personal oppression, the hard insolence of officials 
against whom there was no appeal, and the brutality 
of their retainers, drove the Welsh into revolt. 

Llywelyn received from their own mouths an 
account of what they suffered. They expressed their 
determination to rebel ; and stated pleadingly that 
they preferred death in a struggle for freedom to 
slavery under the feet of a strange oppressor. By 
becoming their champion, Llywelyn had to depart 
from his policy of peace, and open again the old 
hopeless struggle for the independence of a united 
Wales. He sacrificed policy to sympathy, and crossed 



THE CHIEFS SUPPORT LLYWELYN 1 63 

the Conway into the lowlands of the four cantrevs. 
His appearance caused a universal revolt, from 
Deganwy to Chester. In one week the whole country, 
except one or two castles, was reduced ; and young 
Edward saw, from the walls of Chester, the advancing 
army of one of his own subjects regarded joyfully as 
a deliverer. 

Llywelyn could not rest with what he had done. 
He must seek security, as his grandfather had done, 
in the unity of the Welsh chiefs. In the southern 
part of Wales, where the English barons had taken 
advantage of the weakness of Gwynedd to encroach 
upon the chiefs, they were everywhere ready to rise. 
Meredith, son of Rees the Hoarse, his grandfather's 
ally, had already fled to him, and had accompanied 
him in his victorious march through the four cantrevs. 
Before disbanding his army he turned southwards and 
immediately took possession of Meirionnydd, of the 
part of Ceredigion that had been given to Edward, 
and of Gwerthrynion, the upland district of Roger 
Mortimer's great extent of territory in Wales. He 
kept Mortimer's land in his own hands, he placed 
Meredith ab Owen over Ceredigion, and he replaced 
Meredith ap Rees in the South, driving his nephew 
Rees the Little into flight. 

The rapidity of his movements and his apparently 
resistless expeditions, immediately placed Llywelyn 
in the position that his grandfather had occupied. A 
great army of vassal princes — Meredith ap Rees, 
prince of the Deheubarth, and Meredith ab Owen, 
now exercising extensive sway over the Plinlimmon 
district — followed him to Powys, to force its wavering 



1 64 THE FATE OF LLYWELYN's IDEALS 

prince to join them. Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn fled 
helplessly before them, and the whole of Upper 
Powys — save only the castle of Welshpool, a district 
in the Severn valley, and a portion of the upland 
district of Caereinion — passed under Llywelyn's rule. 

There remained Lower Powys, where the wise 
Griffith of Bromfield ruled the valley of the Dee 
from the fortress-crowned height of Dinas Bran, 
trusting to the power and the good faith of Prince 
Edward, who still held Chester, Dyserth, and 
Deganwy. Before Llywelyn could advance on 
Chester he had to turn southwards to meet a new 
danger. 

Rees the Little had appealed to Henry III. against 
the appointment of his uncle, Meredith ap Rees, by 
Llywelyn to rule the South. A strong force under 
Stephen Bacon landed at Carmarthen, and joined 
Rees the Little in an attack on the castle of 
Dynevor, the home of Rees" royal race. Dynevor 
held out until Llywelyn and his army came to raise 
the siege. A long and hard-fought battle, under the 
walls of Dynevor, ended in a victory for Llywelyn. 
The victor then marched westwards through Dyved, 
and his success as a peace-maker was as great as his 
success as a general. From Carmarthen to Newport, 
on the Dyved coast, the country submitted to him ; 
the south of Dyved and the lands of the earl of 
Gloucester in Glamorgan were invaded, and peace 
was made between Meredith ap Rees and his 
scheming nephew, Rees the Little. 

Edward had to look on helplessly at Chester. 
Geoffrey Langley repented, when it was too late, 



DIFFICULTIES OF PRINCE EDWARD 1 65 

for the tyranny which had forced success on 
Llywelyn. On Llywelyn's advance, Edward had 
to retreat precipitously to Chester. The Welsh army 
was divided into two portions, marching along 
different routes in order to secure provisions, each 
division well handled, in constant touch with one 
another, able to unite easily, or to converge upon 
any one point. Llywelyn had seen, during the 
misery of Davydd's reign, that the supplying of 
an army with provisions was the greatest difficulty 
and the cause of final failure or success. He had 
to keep in the field, for weeks together, an army 
of thirty thousand footmen and five hundred mail- 
clad horsemen. Mon, his granary, was of vital im- 
portance ; and the king, when he had got an Irish 
fleet to cut him off from the corn-lands of Mon, found 
that Llywelyn had a fleet which efficiently protected 
the island. Even then there was coasting trade 
between the north coast and Liverpool, and Llywelyn 
could easily find hardy sailors. 

Edward appealed for help to his father and to his 
uncle, the king of the Romans. Griffith, lord of 
Maelor, his only remaining Welsh ally, had been 
driven from his rich and extensive Jand by a force 
of ten thousand bowmen and lancers, mounted on 
hardy mountain ponies. His uncle, who had his 
own expensive plans to think of, could give him 
little help ; Richard's advice to Llywelyn to desist, 
though given by one in whom the Welsh trusted, 
could not be accepted by the Welsh princes until 
they had secured their rights. The king had his 
own troubles, and no money to spare. " What is it 



1 66 THE FATE OF LLYWELYN'S IDEALS 

to me ? " he asked. " I have given you the land. 
Throw yourself into the struggle ; win such fame in 
your youth that your enemies will fear you in the 
future." 

Later on it was to be Llywelyn's lot to see 
Edward's irresistible army closing around Snowdon. 
Now it was Edward's fate to look from the walls of 
Chester on the land which had been granted him as 
one of his first possessions, and which he could not 
conquer. It was during these bitter days that he 
committed the cruelties which displeased his own 
people, and which made the Welsh, while willing to 
renew their allegiance to the perfidious and arrogant 
Henry, determined that they would not be subjects 
of Edward. It was possibly the memory of these 
days that made Edward harsher, when success came, 
than a conqueror need be to the conquered. 

The defeat of Stephen Bacon, the helplessness of 
Edward, the universal character of the Welsh revolt, 
and the growing power of Llywelyn, forced the king 
to make a supreme effort. In August, 1257, he 
reached Chester with a great army. Llywelyn 
hastened to offer terms of peace. He and his 
nobles offered allegiance to the king, on condition 
that their old liberties be restored and that Edward 
be not set over them. The king refused to treat, and, 
after devastating the four cantrevs, succeeded in re- 
lieving Deganwy. His retreat, in the cold, short 
days of late autumn, was a disastrous one, his starv- 
ing army being harassed at every step by Llywelyn's 
bowmen. 

The king's disastrous expedition had relieved 



DEFECTION OF MEREDITH AP REES 1 6/ 

Deganwy, it is true, but it had shown Griffith, lord 
of Maelor, that the king could not protect him 
against Llywelyn. He submitted and joined the 
Welsh chiefs, thus saving himself from the fate 
of his kinsman, Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, who lost 
Upper Powys, Llywelyn was now at the height 
of his power, but with that consciousness of final 
failure which made his whole life a struggle against 
unrelenting fate, he knew that his position was a 
precarious one. He tried to strengthen himself 
against the vengeance of Edward in many ways ; 
he revived the Welsh council of nobles, he tried 
to form an alliance with Scotland, he made common 
cause with the English barons. 

After the retreat of Henry, the Welsh chiefs took a 
solemn oath of allegiance to Llywelyn, excommuni- 
cation as well as forfeiture to be the punishment of 
any traitor. It was Meredith ap Rees, the rhost 
powerful of the chiefs, and one who owed everything 
to Llywelyn, that first betrayed his allies. He may 
have been dissatisfied with his position of dependence, 
being the representative of the royal family of South 
Wales ; it was his independence of Llywelyn that 
he gained when the king recovered his power. He 
entered into negotiations with Patrick de Sayes, 
the king's seneschal at Carmarthen. Llywelyn first 
tried friendly means to recall him to his allegiance. 
He sent his brother Davydd, Meredith ab Owen, 
Rees the Little, and Rees Mechyll to meet Meredith 
ap Rees and Patrick de Sayes at Newcastle Emlyn, on 
the Teivy. A treacherous attack made on Llywelyn's 
envoys resulted in the death of Patrick de Sayes and 



1 68 THE FATE OF LLYWELYN'S IDEALS 

the capture of Meredith ap Rees. Meredith was 
tried by the nobles in council, found guilty of treason, 
and placed in the prison on the rock at Criccieth. At 
Christmas, 1259, he was released, but he left a son 
as hostage in Gwynedd, and gave the royal strong- 
hold of Dynevor to Llywelyn. 

It was the struggle between the king and his 
barons that had given the power represented by 
Llywelyn a new lease of life. Henry's arrogance, 
favouritism, and heavy debts, incurred in the foolish 
attempt to gain Sicily for his son Edmund, had driven 
the barons to open revolt. Between June 11, when 
the barons met at the Parliament of Oxford, and May 
13, 1258, when the king was defeated and captured 
by Simon de Montfort at the battle of Lewes, the 
struggle between the barons and the king went on — 
the king sometimes in power, a council of the barons 
at other times, while the struggle often degenerated 
into open civil war. 

Llywelyn's aim was to make peace with the king, 
on condition that he should be allowed to extend his 
sway over the Welsh chiefs, and to settle disputes 
between the English border lords and their tenants. 
Richard, bishop of Bangor, who had been his mother's 
faithful adviser, went to the king to treat, but met 
with no success. Still the king was in no position to 
interfere, and Llywelyn worked energetically and 
successfully to realise his aim. In 1260 he took Roger 
Mortimer's castle at Builth, but acted very generously 
towards his kinsman Roger himself; and his march 
across South Wales was that of a prince making a 
peaceful progress among his own people. His pro- 



169 

tection was sought, not only by petty chieftains of 
the wild Wye country, but by Griffith ap Gwen- 
wynwyn, the last of the great Welsh nobles to 
aquiesce in the new supremacy of Gwynedd. 

The Barons' War brought Llywelyn into anta- 
gonism with Roger Mortimer, who was a strong 
partisan of the king. On the other hand, it placed 
allies where he had to watch enemies before — in 
Glamorgan and at Chester. Gilbert de Clare, the 
brilliant and ambitious young earl of Gloucester, 
who had joined the barons after much dallying 
with either side, held the barony of Glamorgan — and 
so Llywelyn found himself at peace with the only 
extensive part of Wales which did not owe allegiance 
to him. In 1265 Simon de Montfort, the leader of 
the English barons, became earl of Chester ; but, for 
years before, neither the king nor Edward had been 
able to advance far into Wales from this direction. 

In 1263, though excommunicated, Llywelyn gained 
victory after victory. He took the castle of Dyserth 
and starved Deganwy into surrendering, while his ally 
Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn took Mold, thus clearing 
the four cantrevs of every vestige of English rule. 
The battle of Lewes gave Simon de Montfort, 
Llywelyn's ally, possession of England and of its 
king. The centre of opposition to Earl Simon was 
the country of Roger Mortimer. A rebellion of the 
march lords, led by Roger Mortimer and Roger 
Clifford, brought Simon and Llywelyn to the 
borders ; from Hay to Ludlow, and from Ludlow 
to Montgomery they beat down all opposition. 
Leaving Llywelyn all powerful in Wales and Edward 



I/O THE FATE OF LLVWELYN's IDEALS 

prisoner in Hereford, Simon left for the south of 
England. Jealousy arose between him and the 
moody, grasping earl of Gloucester. By a ruse 
planned by Mortimer, Edward rode away from his 
prison at Hereford. Simon hastened back to Wales. 
He captured Monmouth, and joined Llywelyn in 
overrunning Glamorgan. 

Edward had begun to attack the English barons, 
with an army gathered on the Welsh border. Simon, 
with an army largely Welsh, hastened over the 
Severn. At Evesham, almost surrounded by 
Edward, the earl of Gloucester, and Roger 
Mortimer, he was forced to give battle. Simon 
fell in battle ; his son Henry fell beside him, and 
the greatest loss in his army was among the Welsh. 
When Simon and Despenser and the faithful nobles 
had been overcome on that early August morning, by 
sheer weight of numbers, their Welsh soldiers and 
others crowded for refuge into a church. They were 
mercilessly slaughtered in it and around it. Young 
Henry de Montfort, a playmate of Edward, whom 
his father had held at the font, was buried with due 
honours. But the body of the great earl — the most 
chivalrous character produced under the influence of 
the Franciscans, the champion of English consti- 
tutionalism, and the creator of the English Parlia- 
ment — was barbarously mutilated, the head being sent 
to Worcester to Roger Mortimer's wife. The muti- 
lation must have shocked even a daughter of a 
Braose and the wife of a Mortimer, even if she were 
an incarnation of the evil of both these border 
families. 



THE TREATY OF MONTGOMERY 17I 

The disinherited adherents of Simon maintained 
their opposition to the king, however, in various 
parts of the country, and the powerful earl of 
Gloucester was once again preparing to oppose the 
victor. Llywelyn hurled back the army sent against 
him by Henry, and made his peace with the earl of 
Gloucester. Henry HI. came with an army to 
Shrewsbury in September, 1267, rather later in the 
year than in previous expeditions. With him came 
Ottobon, the legate of Clement IV., and he was 
entrusted with power to make peace. The terms 
of the treaty of peace signed at Shrewsbury on a 
Sunday in September, 1267, were practically the same 
as those granted to Llywelyn by Simon de Montfort. 
Llywelyn was to do homage to Henry HI., and to 
pay an indemnity of thirty thousand marks. He was 
to be Prince of Wales, and to receive the homage of 
all the Welsh barons, with the exception of Meredith 
ap Rees. The four cantrevs were to remain in his 
possession. 

Four days later Henry and Llywelyn met at 
Montgomery, and there was ratified the treaty 
which gave Wales peace under the recognised rule 
of Llywelyn. The extent of his power during the 
years of peace is proved by his one expedition, in 
which he took Caerphilly Castle, owing to a dispute 
with Gilbert de Clare, the most powerful baron of the 
greatest baronial family of the Middle Ages. 

With the Treaty of Montgomery most of the older 
generation pass away. Richard, bishop of Bangor, 
protector of Llywelyn's youth, had died in 1267, 
having held his see for thirty tempestuous years. 



1/2 THE FATE OF LLYWELYN S IDEALS 

A year earlier Anian, bishop of St. Asaph, had died. 
Meredith ab Owen, of the royal race of the South, 
Llywelyn's most faithful ally, had died in 1265, and 
had been gathered to his fathers at Strata Florida. 
Griffith ap Madoc, the politic lord of Bromfield, 
was buried at Valle Crucis in 1269. In 1271 the 
forsworn Meredith ap Rees was buried before the 
great altar at Whitland, and the ubiquitous Rees the 
Little at Tal y Llychau. In 1272 died Henry III., 
king of England. There remained Edward, earl of 
Chester and king of England ; Llywelyn, prince of 
Wales, and his shifty vassal, Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn ; 
and the two border lords, Roger Mortimer and 
Gilbert de Clare. Llywelyn's policy presupposed 
the independence of Wales ; Edward was bent upon 
its subjection. In the death struggle between the 
two rival princes of Wales, embittered as it was by 
personal hatred, we see the final rejection by both 
parties of the wise compromise which formed the 
political ideal of Llywelyn the Great. 




X 



THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 



On the death of Henry III., in 1272, Llywelyn 
refused to go to take the oath of fealty to Edward, 
who was coming home leisurely from the Crusades to 
wear the crown of England ; but worked energetically 
as if preparing for a new struggle — strengthening his 
castles, watching the suspected Davydd and Griffith 
ap Gwenwynwyn, plotting with the children of Simon 
de Montfort, negotiating with the Pope. 

It is quite clear that Llywelyn believed from the 
beginning that nothing less than his complete undoing 
would satisfy Edward. From the beginning the 
struggle between the despairing obstinacy of the one, 
and the merciless determination of the other, was 
inevitable. 

Edward was crowned with great splendour at 
Westminster in August, 1274. The king of Scotland 
and prince of Wales were summoned to do homage 
to the king. Alexander appeared, Llywelyn did not. 
He probably remembered his father's fate. Time 
after time he was sumrqoned to Shrewsbury and to 




<0 






DETERMINED OPPONENTS 1/5 

Westminster. He demanded hostages — the king's 
brother, Gilbert of Gloucester, and the Chief Justice 
— but they were refused. He stated the grounds of 
his refusal in a letter to Pope Gregory X. They are 
chiefly two — he does not trust himself to a court 
where his enemies are in high honour ; the peace 
made by the legate Otto has been broken by Edward. 
The abbots of Strata Florida and Aberconway 
brought the same statement to the English bishops. 
Llywelyn complained that the Treaty of Montgomery 
had been broken by the king, especially by harbouring 
Davydd, Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, and other outlaws. 
He states that he does not trust himself to his enemies 
and his own rebellious subjects, and evidently believes 
that another desolating war is inevitable. 

Besides the memory of the old struggle Llywelyn's 
plans for the immediate future must have been 
exceedingly repugnant to Edward. He was to marry 
Eleanor, daughter of the great earl Simon de 
Montfort, the representative of the opposition to the 
king's power. He would be, not only the prince of 
Wales, but the successor of Earl Simon as the leader 
of the English barons. 

In the autumn of 1275 Edward appeared with an 
army at Chester, and summoned Llywelyn to him. 
Llywelyn summoned his council of nobles. " On 
their unanimous advice," says the Welsh chronicler, 
" he did not go to the king, because the king harboured 
his fugitives, none other than Davydd ap Griffith and 
Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn. And for that reason the 
king returned in anger to England, and Llywelyn 
returned to Wales." The frightened monk relates 



1/6 THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

that, at the same time, there was an earthquake in 
Wales. 

Eleanor, the sister of Henry III. and widow of 
Simon de Montfort, had retired to Montargis after 
her husband's fall, exchanging the magnificence of 
Kenilworth for a life of prayer and almsgiving at 
a Dominican nunnery founded by Earl Simon's 
sister. In England her cause and that of her 
children was pleaded by Edward, who had received 
much kindness at her hands at Kenilworth, and her 
brother, the king of the Romans, who owed his life 
to Earl Simon. It was the king of the Romans who 
tried to mediate between Eleanor and the king. All 
attempts were fruitless on account of the insatiable 
desire of Eleanor's sons for revenge. In Lent, 1271, 
Edward had sent his cousin Henry, son of the king 
of the Romans, to Viterbo to confer with Charles of 
Anjou and Philip of France concerning the inter- 
regnum in the Papacy, and possibly to offer reconcilia- 
tion to the two sons of Simon de Montfort, Simon 
and Guy, his cousins. Mass was being celebrated at 
a church in Viterbo, and Henry was kneeling in 
prayer before the great altar. Suddenly Simon and 
Guy appeared in the church, and, crying " Thou 
escapest not, traitor," they plunged their swords into 
him. Guy tore him by the hair from the altar through 
the throng, and completed the murder outside the 
portals of the church. The ghastly murder sent a 
thrill of horror through Europe ; and Dante placed 
Guy among the murderers in the river of boiling 
blood within the pit of hell. 

In the spring of 1275 Eleanor died at Montargis. 



CAPTURE OF ELEANOR 1 77 

By her death-bed were Amaury, her youngest son, 
and Eleanor, her only daughter, now twenty-two 
years old. When a child of twelve Eleanor had met 
Llywelyn at Kenilworth. Probably Llywelyn was 
in constant communication with the Montfort family ; 
and the proud and suffering countess, in completing 
the arrangements for the marriage of her daughter, 
remembered on her death-bed the alliance between 
her husband and Llywelyn from which she had 
expected so much. Amaury was to take his sister 
to Wales. He sailed, with two French knights and 
two friars, but, in passing the Scilly Isles, they 
were all captured by merchantmen from Bristol, and 
eventually they found themselves in the hands of 
their cousin, the king of England. Amaury was 
immediately thrown into prison. Llywelyn's bride 
was to proceed to Wales on one condition only — the 
prince of Wales was to come to England and do 
homage, trusting to the mercy of the king. The 
hard condition could not be accepted, and both sides 
prepared for war. From the autumn of 1276 to the 
autumn of the following year Edward busily prepared 
for an attack that would finally crush Llywelyn. 
War was declared. Roger Mortimer held the borders, 
and intrigues were carried on with some of Llywelyn's 
timid or wavering barons in South Wales. 

In August, 1277, the great army began to close 
around Wales in four divisions. The king marched 
through Chester on Rhuddlan. Further south the 
earl of Lincoln and Roger Mortimer advanced 
through Shrewsbury and Montgomery, restoring 
Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn to a portion of his lands. 

13 



178 THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

The earl of Hereford moved on Brecon. An army 
under Edmund of Lancaster and Payn, son of 
Patrick de Sayes, moved from Carmarthen against 
Deheubarth and Ceredigion. Dolvorwyn delayed 
the advance of the earl of Lincoln for a fortnight ; 
but, with no help from Llywelyn possible, the resist- 
ance of the chiefs of South Wales could not be long 
maintained. Some retreated to Llywelyn in Snowdon, 
but most of them, including the sons of Meredith ap 
Rees, surrendered to Roger Mortimer or Payn. The 
whole of South Wales being reduced, Edmund, the 
king's brother, built the castle of Aberystwyth, to 
hem Llywelyn in on the south. 

Meanwhile Edward was moving slowly through 
Flint and Rhuddlan. At Basingwerk he had been 
joined by Davydd, who had left Llywelyn. Edward's 
intentions are seen from the promise he made to 
Davydd, who was to get half of Snowdon, and a 
district on either side, Mon if the king did not retain 
it, or Penllyn. A fleet from the Cinque Ports had 
destroyed the standing corn in Mon before it was 
ripe for harvesting : the multitudes which flocked into 
Snowdon had left their crops unharvested in the low- 
lands. This time famine would come to Snowdon 
first, not to the king's camp. Seeing that it was 
hopeless to continue the struggle, Llywelyn entered 
into negotiations with the king at Conway in the 
beginning of November, and on November 10, 1277, 
he signed the humiliating Treaty of Rhuddlan in 
Edward's presence. All men kept in prison on 
account of the king were to be set free ; and so, 
among others. Red Owen emerged from his long 



THE TREATY OF RHUDDLAN 179 

captivity. Llyvvelyn was to pay an indemnity of 
fifty thousand marks, to be exacted when it pleased 
the king. The four cantrevs were to pass into the 
king's hands for ever ; Mon was to be restored to 
Llywelyn on payment of a fine and a yearly rent, 
and it was to lapse to the king if Llywelyn died with- 
out heirs. The barons who had owned allegiance to 
Llywelyn, from Chester to Kidwelly, were all, except 
the five lords of Snowdon, henceforth to hold their 
lands of the king. With Llywelyn's life the title of 
Prince of Wales was to cease, and the barons of 
Snowdon were to become the king's men. Llywelyn 
was to come to England annually to do homage, ten 
eminent hostages were to be given, and twenty Welsh 
chiefs chosen by the king were to come to England 
every year to take their oaths that the articles of the 
peace should be duly observed. If Llywelyn failed 
to observe them, the chiefs were to take the king's 
part against him. 

But the most effective securities for the main- 
tenance of the Treaty of Rhuddlan were the ring 
of enemies which were placed around the helpless 
prince. Lleyn was given to Red Owen ; Aberyst- 
wyth Castle stood between Llywelyn and his old 
dependents in South Wales ; the faithless Davydd, 
now an English knight and the husband of the 
widowed daughter of the earl of Derby, was given 
the castle of Denbigh, right in the heart of the four 
cantrevs and overlooking the fertile Vale of Chv)'d. 
Llywelyn had obtained the best terms he could get 
for the four cantrevs — the tenants were to hold their 
lands on the old conditions and were to be judged 
according; to their own customs. 



l8o THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

Having paid a portion of the indemnity, and with 
the excommunication removed, Llywelyn and his 
chiefs followed the king to London, where they spent 
their miserable Christmas. Llywelyn again repeated 
his act of homage in a parliament at Westminster. 
The chiefs were offended by the crowds which 
followed them, attracted by their strange dress ; and 
they found that London contained too little milk and 
too much beer. They returned to their own country 
feeling that worse might befall them than death in 
fighting for their independence. 

Llywelyn's marriage at Worcester, in October, 
1278, in spite of its magnificence, was full of sadness. 
At Edward's marriage, Wales was given him ; at 
Llywelyn's marriage, Wales was taken away from 
him and he became a helpless dependent on his great 
father-in-law's conqueror. Almost on the way to 
church Edward forced new concessions from him, 
which he dared not refuse. The marriage took place 
at the door of the cathedral. Two kings were present 
■ — the king of England and the king of Scotland. 

" On the morrow," says the Welsh chronicler, 
" Llywelyn and Eleanor returned in gladness to 
Wales." Llywelyn knew that a struggle against the 
merciless Edward was hopeless ; his own desire was 
for peace. Would he be content with bringing peace 
and prosperity into Snowdon, wearing the empty and 
vanishing title of Prince of Wales though he could 
afford no protection to the tenants of Rhuvoniog or 
the princes of South Wales ? Eleanor had seen many 
turns of fortune and knew the anxiety and the horrors 
of war. Would she incite Llywelyn to take up her 



GRIEVANCES OF THE CANTREVS l8l 

father's quarrel, or would she be a peacemaker 
between him and her cousin, the king of England ? 
Llywelyn's natural love for peace, and the tone of 
the letters written by Eleanor when angry passions 
were again renewed, make us believe that Llywelyn 
was resigned to his lot. But peace, even in the 
fastnesses of Snowdon or the sea-girt security of 
Mon, was impossible. 

The promise to treat the tenants of the cantrevs 
according to their own customs was thrown to the 
winds. They were made subject to the county court 
of Chester, but the injustice of the English officials 
was far more galling than even the justice of the law. 
One example may be taken from those collected by 
Llywelyn. A gentleman and his wife, walking on 
the high road near Rhuddlan, were attacked by 
masons returning to the town. W.hen the gentleman 
tried to defend his wife, whom the villains were trying 
to drag from him, they murdered her. The most 
active of the murderers and his companions were 
arrested, and the kin of the slain demanded his 
punishment from the king's justice at Chester. The 
wronged kinsmen were thrown into prison, and the 
murderers set free. Justice denied ; the selling of 
offices, which were taken away when the money had 
been paid ; intimidation ; the brutality of bailiffs — 
the men of the cantrevs had a long list of grievances. 
In Ceredigion and Ystrad Towy the same remorseless 
haste was shown to complete a revolution that violated 
the sacredness of the peasants' most vital interests. 

The Welsh lords of land had grievances everywhere. 
From the sons of Meredith ap Rees in Ystrad Towy 



1 82 THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

to the son of Griffith ap Madoc in the valley of the 
Dee, complaints arose about high-handed interference 
with their rights and with the customs of their tenants. 
Injustice was done to these in spite of the services 
of their fathers to Edward ; little chance, then, had 
those who had been forced into submission to appeal 
against the new lords and officials placed over them. 
Their jurisdiction was taken from the princes, extor- 
tionate exactions were taken from their people. The 
brutal answer to all complaints against the violation 
of Welsh law was that what the conqueror regarded 
as reasonable would be done. 

Davydd, who had so often betrayed his brother, 
found his nominal reward a real punishment. He 
found himself practically subject to the Justice of 
Chester, and that he had to plead for his lands 
according to English law. The wrathful prince 
appeared, indeed, at the Chester court, but to declare 
in a loud voice that he placed his land under the 
peace of God and of the king ; and then, having 
made his obeisance, he disappeared. Trespassers on 
his lands were protected against him, and his angry 
recriminations were answered by cool insults. He 
was told that, as soon as Reginald de Grey returned 
from the king's council, his castle of Hope would be 
taken from him and his children held as hostages. 
As the sons of Meredith had pleaded that even the 
Jews were allowed to retain their own law in England, 
Davydd appealed to the king, as the lord of various 
nations enjoying their own laws, to allow Wales also 
to retain its ancient customs. 

The church in Wales had its grievances also. The 



BEGINNING OF THE STRUGGLE 1 83 

Welsh clergy were married, and were despised by 
the monks on account of their scanty Latin. Peck- 
ham, the arrogant but well-meaning archbishop of 
Canterbury, looked upon the Welsh not only as the 
opponents of the irresistible power of Edward, but as 
the opponents of the civilisation introduced by the 
Church. Merciless towards the clergy on the one 
hand, he condemned Llywelyn on the other for 
privileges sanctioned by the laws of Howel. A 
stern reformer, unsympathetic and bigoted, he was 
independent and honest ; but his arrogant tone 
precipitated the struggle, as it afterwards made it 
impossible for him to be a successful arbitrator. 

Llywelyn had his own grievances. He and the 
king did not put the same construction on some of 
the articles of the Treaty of Rhuddlan. Llywelyn 
insisted on the privileges given him by Welsh law ; 
Edward claimed the power to override it when it was 
against right. There was a quarrel concerning lands 
in Cyveiliog between Llywelyn and Griffith ap 
Gwenwynwyn, and Llywelyn claimed that the case 
should be tried on the spot, according to his con- 
struction of the treaty. When summoned to Mont- 
gomery to plead before the king's justice, he refused 
to go. 

Sorrow and anxiety came with the year 1282. In 
March the discontent broke out beyond the Dovey ; 
Griffith ap Meredith and Rees ap Maelgwn took 
Aberystwyth and its castle, sparing the lives of the 
garrison, because the days of our Lord's passion 
were nigh. Davydd, who had spent most of his life 
at the king's court and in the king's service, was 



184 THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

hampered by no such thoughts of mercy. On the 
eve of Pahn Sunday, 1282, while a tempest was 
raging, he and his army stormed Hawarden Castle ; 
the garrison was overpowered, and Roger Clifford, 
justiciary of Wales, was mortally wounded. With 
astonishing rapidity the flame of rebellion, so 
daringly ignited, spread over Wales. Llywelyn, 
whatever his attitude towards the rising storm had 
been, braced himself for the task of guiding its 
destructive and futile course. 

Edward heard of the revolt at Devizes, where he 
was' spending Easter, and he determined to crush 
Llywelyn's power for ever. Between April and 
midsummer he gathered an enormous army of 
English, and of foreign mercenaries. From Chester 
the great army rolled on irresistibly over the four 
cantrevs that knew the horrors of war so well. Hope 
was taken, and Llywelyn and Davydd, raising the 
siege of Flint and Rhuddlan, retired in a kind of 
running fight. Without receiving loss themselves, 
they inflicted galling losses on the advancing English 
army, and that great unwieldy body wreaked its 
savage vengeance on church and farm alike in the 
devoted cantrevs. Its advance was, however, as 
certain as that of the sea. In July Edward was at 
Rhuddlan, preparing the final attack on Snowdon by 
army and fleet. The mass of great mountains faced 
him when he reached the Conway, impregnable as 
ever ; and he knew that it was only by a turning 
movement by way of M6n that Llywelyn could be 
attacked. 

At this anxious moment, when he was straining 



DEATH OF THE LADY OF SNOW DON I 85 

every nerve to check the advance of Edward, to 
prepare the defences of Snowdon, and to organise 
resistance in South Wales, a great sorrow befel 
Llywelyn. In June, Eleanor died in childbed at 
Aber. She was buried at Llan Vaes, on the 
island side of the Menai, opposite that "estuary 
of the white shells " where her brief married life had 
been spent. She had written to Edward since her 
marriage, and had stayed at his court. But Edward's 
hatred towards her brothers was as bitter as ever. 
His resentment against his cousins, natural as it was, 
might well have been softened by the misfortunes 
that overwhelmed them. Simon, the eldest, who had 
ventured to England in disguise to pray at the tomb 
of his father and brother, had died in exile. Guy 
had been doing penance in a solitary cell for nearly 
ten years, and was to die in a Sicilian dungeon. 
Amaury had only just been set free. Archbishop 
Peckham being his surety, and was dependent on 
Edward in poverty and in exile. The popular song 
of the time had called upon all to pray for the good 
estate of the heir of the leader of the barons. But 
the great earl was soon to be represented by grand- 
daughters only, the daughters of Guy and his Tuscan 
wife, and this little Gwenllian, born in so tempestuous 
a time among the mountains of Snowdon. Eleanor 
alone could remind Edward of the happy early days 
at Kenilworth. But, now, her place as mediator 
must be taken by another. 

While the king was planning the final assault, the 
busy, meddling archbishop hurried to Wales. He 
had sent a Welsh priest before him to Llywelyn, 



1 86 THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

whom he had excommunicated, to say he was 
coming, against the king's will, to try to mediate. 
At the same time he accused the Welsh of cruelty, 
and gave them to understand that submission was 
inevitable. Llyvvelyn's answer was dignified, but 
showed that arbitration was hopeless. The arch- 
bishop went to the king, and passed on to Llywelyn 
to bring him and his nobles to plead their grievances 
before Edward. Llywelyn wanted security for the 
liberties of his people, and for his own reception as 
their prince. Edward insisted upon unconditional 
surrender. The archbishop crossed the mountains 
again, with a message from the nobles. Llywelyn, 
as the price of quiet submission, was to get an 
English estate and provision for his little daughter. 
Davydd was to go to the Crusades, and not to return 
without the king's consent ; and his children would 
be provided for. The answer of Llywelyn's council, 
now^ summoned in its shrunken form for the last 
time, was pathetically stubborn. They pleaded the 
hoary antiquity of Welsh dominion, they pleaded 
that Edward had observed no covenant or charter, 
they pleaded that submission would reduce them to 
the state of oppression in which their countrymen of 
the four cantrevs were, and they declared that, hard 
as it was to live in war and perpetual danger, yet is 
it much harder to be utterly destroyed. 

The good archbishop completely lost his temper. 
He reproaches his stubborn, erring sheep for refusing 
the bridge into safety which he had made of his own 
body. With a display of learning which is in strange 
contrast to the stirring action of that critical moment, 



BATTLE OF MOEL Y DON 1 8/ 

he reviles their boast of descent from Camber, son of 
Brutus, a friend of an adulterer, from whom they had 
their lax views about marriage ; he condemns their 
claim to indefeasible possession of their .mountains, 
for they themselves had driven an earlier race from 
them ; as to their demands for the law of Howel the 
Good, the authority of that lawgiver was the devil ; 
and the dignified assumption of superiority by the 
Welshmen brings the taunt that their slothful and 
lascivious existence would not have been heard of 
outside England had it not been for the {^\^ Welsh- 
men who are seen in France, mostly beggars. He 
left them to the censure of the Church and the 
vengeance of their enemies, hurling at them the 
denunciation of Holy Writ, " Woe to thee that 
spoilest, shalt thou not be spoiled ? " 

Edward had not been idle. The colliers from the 
Forest of Dean had cut ways through forests, the 
mountaineers of the Pyrenees and the Grampians 
had tried to scale the Penmaen Mawr, the attack 
from the isle of Mon was rapidly developing. At the 
beginning of November, a force of English, Gascons, 
and Spaniards, crossed the Menai to Arvon along a 
bridge of boats at low water. Few of them returned. 
They were attacked at Moel y Don, and driven in 
wild flight to the rising tide of the Menai. 

Edward returned sullenly to Rhuddlan. He saw 
that still greater efforts were necessary, and that a 
difficult winter campaign was before him. At the 
end of November, he issued writs to summon a 
Parliament to meet at Northampton in January, to 
provide men and money for the final repression of 



1 88 THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

the rebellious and unstable Welsh, "though it appears 
to be a difficult undertaking." 

Llywelyn, finding Snowdon safe, hurried to his 
allies in South Wales, where Gloucester and Mortimer 
had worsted the forces of Griffith ap Meredith and 
Rees ap Maelgwn at Llandeilo. He passed rapidly 
through Ceredigion and the Vale of Towy, and then, 
early in December, he entered into the district of 
Builth. Was it to raise the Welsh tenants of the 
Mortimers, or to negotiate with some of the march 
lords? On December nth, in one of the woody 
dells of Buallt, he was slain by a Cheshire man-at- 
arms in a chance encounter. 

Maud Longespee, countess of Salisbury, sent an 
appeal to Archbishop Peckham to remove the ex- 
communication from her cousin's mangled remains, 
and Edmund Mortimer pleaded, on information 
given by his servants who were present at Llywelyn's 
death, that the prince had asked for a priest when 
dying. " But without sure certainty," the archbishop 
wrote to the king, " we will do nothing." Whether 
the headless body of the last native prince of Wales 
lies in the woody ridge by the Irvon, or in the sacred 
precincts of Cwm Hir, it is now impossible, perhaps, 
to say. 

The head was sent to Edward at Rhuddlan. 
Edward, embittered by the deferred hope of the 
conquest of Snowdon, sent the dead prince's head 
through the various divisions of his army. Merlin 
had prophesied that when English money became 
round, the prince of Wales would wear his crown in 
London. It was noticed that the coins issued in 



THE ENEMY IN SNOW DON 1 89 

1278 were round. Edward sent the head, crowned 
in mockery with a crown of ivy, to be paraded on a 
pole through the streets of London, to the sound of 
horns and trumpets, and then set on the Tower to 
rot. 

There is an apparent inconsistency in the last 
Llywelyn's character. His exploits in war and his 
delight in literature, his mild, lovable character and 
his warlike energy when aroused, are continually con- 
trasted by the poets of the time. He is " the dragon 
of Arvon, of resistless fury," and, in the same poem, 
the " mild ruler of the mighty " ; he is " the eagle of 
Snowdon " and the patron of sweet song ; he is the 
" lion of Mona " and the kind-hearted ruler ; " like 
the rush of a mighty hurricane over the desert sea " 
was his onset in battle, but very learned and accom- 
plished is he as a prince at Aberffraw. 

The pathos of his life lies in this fact — he longed 
for peace, and was made for peace, when peace was 
impossible. His ability as an organiser, as well as 
his personal charm, are proved by the affection the 
men of the four cantrevs had for him, and by the 
sudden and paralysing dismay which fell upon his 
country at the news of his death. All opposition to 
Edward collapsed. Red Owen was abject in Lleyn. 
Davydd, histrionic to the last, proclaimed himself 
prince of Wales, and summoned the council to 
Denbigh. But the energy of the Welsh resistance 
had gone. When the king came to Conway in 
March, 1283, the Basque mercenaries swarmed at 
last into the lower districts of Snowdon, followed by 



igO THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

the bulk of Edward's army. Dolbadarn and other 
hastily-fortified positions could not defend the inner 
sanctuary of Snowdon, Davydd had no power over 
his dismayed and starving followers ; and found 
himself a miserable wanderer, hunted by enemy and 
traitor while he led his wife and children from one 
fastness to another, and tried to keep from his con- 




THE LAST HOME OF WELSH INDEPENDENCE. 

{From a drawing of Dolbadarn Castle by Captain Batty.) 

queror the last heirlooms of his house — the crown of 
Arthur and the precious portion of the true cross. 
He was tracked by traitors, and captured at night in 
the mountains above Aber, and hurried to Rhuddlan, 
where he was handed over to Edward. The vin- 
dictive king refused to see his miserable captive, but 
sent him in chains to Shrewsbury Castle, to await his 
trial for treason. 



THE FATE OF DAVYDD \g\ 

The South Wales chieftains, terrified by the fall of 
Llywelyn, surrendered ; and Rees Vychan was sent 
in chains to the Tower. It was upon the miserable 
Davydd, however, that the vengeance of Edward was 
wreaked in so formal and public a manner that it 
embittered and brutalised relations between Wales 
and England for centuries. In his life Davydd was 
insatiable of honour, imagining offence where none 
was meant, pining for the greatness which he knew 
he did not possess, covering his real weakness by 
startling betrayals of his allies, Welsh and English 
alike. He betrayed his country when success was 
possible; he plunged it into war when war meant 
certain ruin. His life was the bane of Wales ; his 
death aroused a pity that caused his weakness to be 
forgotten and his treachery to be pardoned, and he 
bequeathed a bitterness which made him, in death as 
in life, a creator of misunderstanding and hatred. 

In a writ issued in June at Rhuddlan, breathing 
the pent-up vengeance of a merciless conqueror, 
Edward summoned a Parliament to meet at Shrews- 
bury at the end of September. The barons were 
summoned, as usual, by direct writ ; the represen- 
tatives of the English shires, through the sheriff; and 
the representatives of the towns, not through the 
sheriffs in the usual way, but by a writ sent directly 
to the towns, as Simon de Montfort had summoned 
them. The clergy were not summoned ; probably 
because the work of the Shrewsbury Parliament was 
to shed blood. It was to meet to decide what was to 
be done to Davydd, then in the king's hand, " the 
last survivor of that race of traitors." John de Vaus, 



192 THE LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE , 

chief justice of England, presided over the barons 
who tried the last prince of Wales. Every punish- 
ment for treason and murder and sacrilege that one 
life could bear was heaped upon him. He was 
drawn at the tails of horses through the streets of 
Shrewsbury to the gibbet, he was hanged and disem- 
bowelled while yet alive, and the quivering, mangled 
body was beheaded and quartered. North and south 
— York and Winchester — contended for his right 
shoulder ; at four great English towns ghastly 
trophies were exhibited ; and the head was placed 
near that of Llywelyn on the Tower of London. 

The uncertainty of the fate of Llywelyn's body 
gave rise to a great number of traditions. A Welsh 
soldier, taken by the French when they took Calais 
in Mary's reign, wrote that Davydd brought his 
brother's body and placed it in his father's grave at 
Aberconway ; there are few Welshmen alive at the 
present day, if at all interested in Welsh history, who 
have not stood reverently in the woody dingle of 
Cevn y Bedd, believing that their last native prince 
was buried there. 

The certainty of the fate of Davydd's body 
aroused a hereditary hatred which it took centuries 
of national neighbourly actions and of wise legis- 
lation to efface. Shedding of blood in hot fight, 
even of father by son or brother by brother, was, 
unfortunately, only too common in mediaeval Wales. 
But mutilation and torture in cold blood were 
imported, first to the borders, and then to Wales. 
The torture of prisoners took place in the dungeons 
of a Mortimer, the assassination of chiefs invited to 



THE STATUTE OF RHUDDLAN iQ^ 

friendly council in the castle of a Braose, the devising 
of barbarous punishment in the Parliament of an 
Edward I. But it can be said of the princes of 
Wales, as the last of them passes away, that, however 
great their faults had been, they had never 
tortured a prisoner, or betrayed a guest, or wreaked 
inhuman vengeance on a fallen enemy. 

Before the death of Davydd, Edward's castles had 
begun to rise around Snowdon. Conway, the key to 
the conquered districts, changed its character. Its 
Cistercian monks were removed to Maenan, higher 
up the valley ; and a castle, whose patched-up walls 
and roofless banqueting hall still rise grandly from 
the banks of the sandy Conway, was built in the 
once peaceful home of the dead. 

The Christmas of 1283 was spent by the king and 
queen at Rhuddlan, where their daughter Elizabeth, 
the " Welshwoman," had been born the year before. 
The castle had been extended and made more com- 
fortable for the queen. Stephen, the king's painter, 
painted the king's chamber with divers colours ; 
Waldbor, the fisherman, laid bait ; Richard the 
Forester caught rabbits ; wax and almonds came by 
road from Chester, and wine by water ; many 
minstrels attended the queen's churching, and were 
treated with princely generosity; Ralph de Vavasour 
came running to say that the last castle in Snowdon 
had been taken. 

By mid-Lent, 1284, the king had returned from 
the Parliament of Lincoln to Rhuddlan, and he there 
enacted the Statute of Rhuddlan, which defined the 
new method of administering law in Wales, and 

14 



194 T'H^ LAST FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

stated the extent to which the law of Wales was to 
be superseded. 

The storms which had so often driven English 
kings back seemed to have ceased. Through the 
winter the distant mountains were veiled in mist and 
rain, but no snow or frost was seen in the Vale of 
Clwyd. The mild, open winter was followed by a 
glorious summer. Edward had had storms enough 
while trying to force the natural ramparts of Snow- 
don ; once within it, even wave and wind seemed 
submissive. 




XI 



THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 



" The land of Wales, with its inhabitants," says 
Edward I., in the ordinance called the Statute of 
Rhuddlan, " had been subjected to us previously in 
feudal right. And now God, by His grace, all obstacles 
whatever coming to an end, has converted it totally 
and in its entirety into our own dominion, and has 
annexed it to the crown of the said kingdom as part 
of the same body." 

The conquest brought into the king's hands the 
government of the principality of Llywelyn, and of 
those chieftains in South Wales — many of them of 
the royal race of Dynevor — who at various times 
had become Llywelyn's men. In all these lands, 
government by princes gave place to government by 
king's officials. Instead of tiny principalities, com- 
posed of commotes grouped differently at different 
times, there were to be shires with fixed boundaries ; 
instead of ruling scions of the Welsh royal race there 
were to be a sheriff, coroner, and bailiffs of commotes 

in each shire. 

195 



196 



THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 



Mon, being an island, was made into a shire by 
itself, called Anglesey. Its cornlands, and the peace 
which the sea ensured for it, made it the wealthiest 
part of Wales. It contained the four cantrevs of 
Rhosyr, Cemmaes, Talybolion, and Aberffraw — the 
last having within it the royal demesne of the princes. 

The wild lands of Snowdon, the hitherto uncon- 




CONWAY CASTLE. 

{From a drawing by Captain Batty. ) 

quered home of Welsh independence, became the shire 
of Carnarvon. One of the parts of this shire was the 
cantrev of Arllechwedd, the western highlands of 
Snowdon, which had been seen spreading away in 
the distance beyond the Conway, and so rarely trod, 
by many an advancing English army. The little 
commote of Creuddyn, containing the historic 



THE NEW SHIRE SYSTEM 1 9/ 

Deganwy, on the eastern side of the Conway, the 
spot from which the attack on inner Wales had been 
so often watched by EngHsh kings, was added to the 
same shire. The next cantrev to the west was Arvon, 
that great mass of mountains which overlook the isle of 
Anglesey, the promontory of Lleyn, and the Berwyn 
uplands which surround them. The third divi- 
sion of Carnarvonshire was the commote of Eivion 
and the cantrev of Lleyn, forming the promontory 
which runs from Snowdon to the western sea. 

The rest of Llywelyn's land — partly Gwynedd, and 
partly portions of Powys that had been ruled by princes 
of the house of Gwynedd — became the shire of 
Merioneth. This shire was made up of two very 
distinct parts. One is the long coast land, from the 
foot of Snowdon to the river Dovey, consisting of the 
commote of Ardudwy and the cantrev of Meirionnydd, 
where a dialect akin to that of Gwynedd was spoken ; 
the other is the upper valley of the Dee, the commotes 
of Penilyn and Edeyrnion, where the dialect of Powys 
was spoken. 

These three shires were placed under the justice of 
Snowdon. The county court was to be held regularly 
in each, every month. Twice a year the sheriff was to 
make his turn through the commotes, to inquire into 
all the picturesque evils of mediaeval Wales, from 
treason to the stealing of homing pigeons, from 
forging to shearing sheep in the folds at night, from 
arson to the collecting by night of the ears of corn in 
autumn. 

East of these conquered mountains lay the four 
cantrevs which had been in the possession of Edward 



igS THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

before 1284, and which had risen in revolt because he 
had tried to introduce the shire system into them. 
The eastern portion was made into the shire of FHnt, 
extending from Rhuddlan to within a few miles 
of Chester. It contains the cantrev of Englefield, 
and the lands of Hope and English Maelor. The 
sheriff of Flint was to attend before the justice of 
Chester, and to bring his accounts to the exchequer 
of Chester. 

South of Llywelyn's old land, beyond the Dovey, 
were the possessions of the royal house of South 
Wales. In the heart of these castles had been built, 
and the castles of Carmarthen and Cardigan came 
into Edward's hands when his father gave him Wales. 
From them, also, he had tried to rule by introducing 
the English shire system. 

The land between the Dovey and the Teivy, with 
Llanbadarn at one end and Cardigan at the other, 
became the new shire of Cardigan. 

The land beyond the Teivy, including the royal 
residence of Dynevor, reaching the southern sea at 
one point, became the shire of Carmarthen. 

These two southern shires had their sheriffs, their 
coroners, and their bailiffs of commotes, like the 
others, but were subject to a separate justice — the 
justice of South Wales. 

In this re-organised principality of Wales, the 
justices and sheriffs were to administer the law of 
Wales, the old law of the land as amended by the 
king, in the Statute of Rhuddlan and in later ordinances. 
The ancient laws of Wales were recited before the 
king and his nobles at Rhuddlan. " We have 



THE NEW CASTLES 1 99 

annulled some of them by the advice of the said 
nobles," Edward says ; " some we have allowed to 
remain, some we have amended, and some others we 
have decreed shall be added." The Welsh custom of 
gavel-kind — the division of an inheritance among the 
male heirs — was retained ; but with two exceptions — 
illegitimate sons could not have portions with their 
legitimate brothers, and women were to inherit on 
the failure of male heirs. 

An inner circle of castles, each castle protecting 
an English town, arose round the northern and 
western sides of Snowdon. Edward's castles were 
built during the golden age of castle building. The 
Crusaders, who had seen the three concentric walls of 
impregnable Constantinople, had introduced great 
reforms in castle building into the west. The castles 
were no longer massive square keeps, with walls from 
ten to twenty feet thick, which could onl}^ be taken 
by mining under the walls or by reducing the garrison 
to starvation. They were no longer shell -keeps 
which crowned a hillock with walls. They were so 
constructed, that those who assailed the walls were 
commanded by round towers at the corners or by 
square towers which stood partly within and partly 
without the walls. They were concentric, that is, 
when the assailants had stormed one castle, they 
found that it was an outer case for a stronger castle 
within. In South Wales, Kidwelly had been made 
into something like a concentric castle; and Caerphilly, 
built by Gilbert of Gloucester in 1271, is the most 
splendid example — three castles presented themselves 
in succession to the assailant. 




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THE NEW TOWNS 20I 

At Conway, Edward found a rocky hillock rising 
from the treacherous sandy shore of the Conway. 
On this he built a castle, divided it by a cross wall 
into two unequal portions, and protected its vulnerable 
side by a number of great circular towers, with a 
slender watch-tower rising gracefully from each. On 
its vulnerable side an enemy would have to scale the 
town wall, to take the outer castle, and then the 
inner, before he would be master of Conway. At 
Carnarvon a tongue of land where the Seiont flows to 
the sea was utilised, and on it there rose in majestic 
beauty a castle which was divided, within, into two 
sections connected by an easily defended doorway. 
A great square tower defends the entrance ; thirteen 
angular towers command every point where the walls 
can be undermined. Beaumaris was placed on a 
plain in a corner of Anglesey, Criccieth on a rock 
jutting into the sea on the coast of Eivionydd, and 
Harlech on the top of a precipitous mass of rock 
rising from the narrow sandy rim of land between the 
sea and the hills of Merioneth. Cricieth is a square 
shell on a rock almost surrounded by the sea ; its 
gate was defended by a square tower. Beaumaris 
and Harlech are concentric. In the former a quad- 
rangle with a tower at each corner rose in massive 
strength within a wall protected by ten Moorish 
towers. In the latter a great tower stands at each 
corner, and the gateway was defended by two more. 

In the shadow of the castles, towns were erected or 
renewed, and charters given them. A hundred years 
earlier, Gerald had described the Welsh as a pastoral 
people, who paid no attention to ships, trade, or 



202 THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

manufactures. But he himself had seen Roman 
Caerleon still the home of a powerful Welsh chieftain, 
Carmarthen had been a port from time immemorial, 
and Carnarvon was connected by Roman roads with 
the west and the south. 

The policy of the kings was to encourage the 
growth of towns in order to break down the tribal 
system which gave the chief his power. For this 
purpose charters were granted to a number of towns 
protected by Norman lords, who got a revenue from 
their markets. Among these were Cardiff, Cardigan, 
Builth, Montgomery, Welshpool, and Rhuddlan. 
Colonies of English merchants and loyal Welsh were 
sheltered by each of Edward's castles. Within his 
reign charters were given to Aberystwyth ; to Car- 
narvon, Conway, Criccieth, and Harlech ; to Caerwys, 
Beaumaris, and Newborough. Bala and Llanvyllin 
were given charters by Edward II. ; as were Cardiff, 
Usk, Caerleon, Newport, Cowbridge, Neath, and 
Cenfig. 

These charters, like all Welsh charters, were copied 
from the charter of Hereford. The privileges given 
included the right of creating a merchant gild, the 
gild obtaining a monopoly of the trade of the 
district. The English character of Carnarvon, Beau- 
maris, and Conway was jealously guarded for political 
reasons. In the other towns, from Denbigh to Cardiff, 
Welshmen appear as burgesses from the beginning. 
The monopoly of the merchants was broken down 
by the king, however, long before the boroughs in 
Wales became Welsh in spirit. Until the middle of 
the last century, English was the language of the 






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WALES 

y^/^r /^e Conquest 6y Edu/ard I 

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/J/ Aferionef/ishlre. 
IV Flints hirt 

V Cardiganshire 

VI CcirmarlhenshiT% 

o Castks 6m/t by £di*^rd I 



204 THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

town and Welsh the language of the surrounding 
country. 

Outside the new castles and privileged boroughs, 
conquered Wales was guarded by a semi-circle of 
Anglo-Welsh march lords. They could no longer 
defy the king, now that the prince of Wales had 
been crushed behind them. Their attempts at intro- 
ducing primogeniture and their rapacity for land 
made their tenants always willing to welcome the 
king's interference. Still they retained much real 
power. Their lordships extended from the Clwyd to 
the Dee, from the Dee to the Severn, and from the 
Severn to the western sea, forming an outer circle 
of march land around the new Welsh shires, and 
separating them from the older English shires. 

In the Vale of Clwyd, Henry de Lacy was granted 
the lordship of Denbigh, which cut Flintshire off from 
the other Welsh shires. He had the energy of his 
English father, and the courteous bearing of his 
beautiful Italian mother. He had taken an active 
part in the conquest of Wales. It was he who took 
Dolvorwyn Castle in 1277. He built at Denbigh the 
castle whose broken remains are still a conspicuous 
object from the cornlands around. While the Red 
Tower was rising, his eldest son fell into the well, and 
was drowned. Towards the end of his life — he died 
in 131 1 — his unwieldy form was the object of 
Gaveston's buffoonery. His wicked unfaithful daughter 
Alice married Thomas of Lancaster, the leader of the 
opposition to Edward's son. 

Further east Roger Mortimer was in Chirk Castle, 
keeping one eye on the Dee and the other on the 



THE MARCH LORDS 205 

Severn. In the valley of the Dee, the stronghold of 
Dinas Bran was but a poor protection to the young 
heirs of Lower Powys ; and the decline of the race of 
Owen Cy veiliog at Powys Castle was eagerly watched 
by many jealous eyes. Richard Fitzalan, first earl of 
Arundel, was the nephew of Roger Mortimer ; he was 
to take an important part in crushing rebellions and 
in sharing the spoil. 

At Wigmore, further south, Roger's elder brother 
Edmund was zealous in his protests of loyalty to 
Edward, because he was now in the dangerous 
position of being the next heir to the Welsh crown. 

Still further south, at Brecon, there was Humphrey 
de Bohun, earl of Hereford, with traditions of oppo- 
sition to the king and of war, sometimes disastrous, 
against the Welsh. His father had been an ally of 
Simon de Montfort, his son was to oppose Edward H. 
After the conquest of Wales his chief aim was to 
humble his powerful neighbour on the other side of 
the Black Mountains, the red earl of Gloucester, 
Gilbert de Clare. 

Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and lord of 
Glamorgan, had taken a prominent part in the 
conquest of Wales, though he had been Llywelyn's 
ally during the earlier part of the Barons' War. 
After Llywelyn's fall, Gilbert tried to extend his 
dominions northwards, and came into collision with 
Humphrey de Bohun, (;arl of Hereford. Even during 
the reign of Edward L these two powerful earls were 
able to wage private war. Gilbert de Clare had much 
trouble with his Welsh tenants in Glamorgan ; and 
the strong castle of Caerphilly, though it marked the 



Iv 






ISOLATION OF REBS AP MEREDITH 207 

perfection of mediaeval castle-building, could not 
bend the men of Glamorgan to his will. 

A close neighbour to Gilbert and Humphrey was 
John de Hastings, Baron Bergavenny. He had 
inherited Abergavenny from his mother's famil}^ 
His father had led the Londoners at the battle of 
Lewes, and had fought for the barons to the last. 
This John claimed the throne of Scotland, for he was 
descended from David, brother of William the Lion. 
He had married Isabel, daughter of William de 
Valence. 

In Pembroke, William de Valence, an ambitious 
foreign adventurer, had obtained extensive lands with 
his wife Joan, granddaughter of William Marshall. 
Insolent and boastful, he was the best hated of all 
the foreigners who opposed Simon de Montfort. His 
inordinate love of fighting attracted him to every 
tournament, and there were many who enjoyed his 
discomfitures. He was banished by the barons, but 
he came back to entice Gloucester to the kind's side. 
He fought at Lewes and Evesham. His reward was 
not small. The boundaries of Pembroke extended 
rapidly. At one time he held Cilgeran and Aber- 
gavenny, and he fought all through the Welsh war, 
to retain and to extend his boundaries. 

Gilbert de Clare, Humphrey de Bohun,and William 
de Valence died before the end of the century ; their 
sons fought at Bannockburn — the young Gilbert was 
killed, the young Humphrey was taken prisoner, 
Aylmer de Valence fled. 

These were the men who stood round the conquered 
Wales, and round the Welsh chiefs, like Rees ap 
Meredith, who had betrayed Llywelyn. 



208 THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

The king took possession of his new land ; when 
he turned his back on Wales, his barons took posses- 
sion of theirs in a way that caused his speedy return. 
Early in 1284 Edward began his slow progress 
through the conquered country. Already a new 
castle was rising at the mouth of the Seiont at 
Carnarvon — still the most beautiful of all Welsh 
castles. It was to be the noblest of the ring of 
castles that had been planned to stand as sentinels 
around Snowdon. While the new castle was rising 
the queen joined Edward at Carnarvon, her baggage 
being carried in carts drawn by four horses each. At 
the end of April the king's second son, Edward of 
Carnarvon, was born. A great discovery was made 
at Carnarvon — the body of the father of Constantine, 
the first Christian emperor, was found. Edward 
ordered it to be buried, with great honour, in the 
church. Though eminently practical and matter-of- 
fact, Edward's imagination must have been at a 
high tension in these strange lands, made almost 
mysterious by their association with Merlin and 
Arthur. And, among other jewels, Arthur's crown 
was given up to the king of England. " Thus," says 
the English historian, "the glory of the Welsh passed 
over to the English." 

Later on, in the summer, Edward went to Lleyn, 
passing between the serrated Eivl and the sea. At 
Nevin, where he found a pleasant plain overlooking 
the sea, he determined to hold a tournament to 
celebrate the conquest of Wales. It may be that 
the finding of Arthur's crown had suggested to the 
king the holding of a "round table." A great number 



A PROCESSION IN LONDON 209 

of earls and barons and knights, and many foreign 
nobles besides, congregated at this distant little 
fishing village, on the first day of August, to cele- 
brate, by brilliant feats and merry revelry, the con- 
quest of the silent mountains around them. 

In autumn the king passed on southwards to 
Cardiganshire. At the end of November he and 
Eleanor appeared at St. David's. He was welcomed 
by the Earl of Gloucester into Glamorgan, whence he 
passed on to Bristol to spend Christmas. 

In the following May, a solemn procession passed 
through London on its way to Westminster Abbey. 
The archbishop of Canterbury and the clergy, in their 
most gorgeous ecclesiastical vestments, were followed 
by a great crowd of people. In the midst came the 
king, carrying the true portion of the Cross of our 
Saviour, adorned with ruddy gold and shining gems, 
which he had brought with him from Wales. He 
placed it on the great altar at Westminster with his 
own hands. 

Edward I., when he left Glamorgan in 1284, left 
Wales in a sullenly peaceful state. The bards 
mourned for Llywelyn, but the corn ripened and the 
flocks prospered as before. Though the conqueror 
could never be regarded as an Arthur, wearing his 
crown at Carnarvon or conducting a knightly tourna- 
ment at Nevin, there was something like a beginning 
of Welsh affection for the young prince born at 
Carnarvon. This prince was now the heir to the 
English crown, for his little brother Alfonso died 
in 1285, his body being buried at Westminster, and 
his heart being sent by his mother to lie among the 

15 



2IO THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

Black Friars. It was to this child, then eleven years 
old, that the honour was given of offering Llywelyn's 
coronet at the shrine of Edward the Confessor at 
Westminster. 

Whether the conquest was to be succeeded by 
peace depended on the wisdom and moderation of 
the justices. In North Wales, the king ruled directly 
through mere officials, and kept a vigilant eye on the 
two brothers who were now heirs to the independence 
he had crushed — the wily Edmund Mortimer of 
Wigmore and the licentious Roger Mortimer of 
Chirk. But in the South, the justice Robert de 
Tibetot showed scant courtesy to ,the Rees ap 
Meredith who represented the royal line of South 
Wales,/ who had been the ally and the rival of 
Llywelyn, and who had helped Edward in order to 
become the chief prince in Wales. Rees was bitterly 
disappointed. He found his jurisdiction taken away 
from him, and his lands encroached upon by those 
who would sit in judgment on him. When he was 
summoned in 1287 to appear at the county court, 
before a justice whom he despised as a robber and 
hated as a tyrant, he defied the king's power. 
Edward wrote from Gascpny, where he had been 
conducting different negotiations in spite of illness 
and news of the discontent of his barons at home 
promising all reasonable justice. Rees could not 
wait. He took possession of the home of his family, 
Dynevor ; he took the castle at Llandovery, lower 
down in the valley of the Towy, and prepared to 
attack the justice at Carmarthen. The earl of 
Cornwall, who was regent, prepared to march against 



THE END OF REES AP MEREDITH 211 

him. Rees and his army refused to give battle, and 
the earl had to content himself with the laborious 
process of undermining otherwise impregnable castles. 
One undermined tovv^er at Dryslwyn was unskilfully 
propped, and fell when it ought not to have fallen, 
burying many knights under its debris. The earl of 
Gloucester, fearing the rise of his own tenants, 
remained inactive, and the earl of Cornwall had to 
retire, leaving the Vale of Towy to winter and Rees 
ap Meredith. As soon as he had gone, disregarding 
the truce, Rees turned northwards and attacked the 
castle in Emlyn on the Teivy. The march lords 
were summoned, their armies closed round Rees, 
and his escape through Glamorgan into Ireland was 
probably connived at by Red Gilbert of Gloucester. 

Tibetot obtained possession of the broken castles, 
and his administration was so unpopular that Rees, 
on his sudden re-appearance in 1290, raised the whole 
country against hinx But the undisciplined rabble, 
as devoid of organisation as their leader was of 
political wisdom, were routed and slaughtered by 
the hastily levied forces of the justice. Rees was 
taken, and carried to York, where Edward was then 
staying on his way to Scotland, to summon the 
claimants to the Scottish Crown before him. The 
Welsh chief was hastily tried, and drawn at the tails 
of horses to his horrible death. 

The country was, however, simmering with insur- 
rection. The sheriff's insolence and the justice's 
injustice were followed by the new tax of fifteenth on 
movables, and the whole country broke out, in 1294, 
into wild, tumultuous revolt, either misguided or not 



212 THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

guided at all. Maelgwn, a young man, led the men 
of Dyved, who looked upon Pembroke and Carmarthen 
as the strongholds of their oppressors. Morgan, the 
dispossessed son of a freeman, led the men of hill and 
dale in Glamorgan, and Red Gilbert fled for his life. 
In mid Wales the insurrection was general ; even the 
monks of Strata Florida were implicated. In the 
Vale of Clwyd, the men of the cantrevs were in revolt, 
and threatened Lacy's castle at Denbigh. Most 
formidable of all was the appearance of one Madoc, 
who claimed to be the son of Llywelyn. 

There was a fair at Carnarvon. Suddenly Madoc 
and his followers burst into the town. Their two 
chief objects of hatred were the new castle and the 
residence of Sir Roger Puleston, sheriff of Anglesey, 
and collector of the new tax. The castle was stormed 
and the town left a smouldering ruin. 

Edward was on the point of leaving for Gascony, 
but he had to spend all his energy on the re-conquest 
of Wales. Money was difficult to get. He demanded 
one half of the revenues of the clergy, on pain of 
outlawry. The dean of St. Paul's fell dead in his 
presence, from sheer fright. It was near the end of 
November before the king could reach Chester. 
Henry de Lacy marched into the Vale of Clwyd, to 
save Denbigh, but was hurled back in disastrous 
defeat by the Welsh. The king pushed on to Conway. 
The river Conway was crossed by part of his army in 
the teeth of fierce resistance, and with great loss of 
life and provisions. Then the king was menaced by 
the gravest danger. The Conway suddenly rose, 
and he found himself in his new castle, with a very 



THE RISING UNDER MADOC 21 3 

slender stock of provisions, closely besieged by the 
Welsh, while his army looked helplessly on over the 
now impassable Conway. The king had no better 
fare in that splendid banqueting-room than salt 
meat, stale bread, and water sweetened with hone}^ 
The river subsided, however, before the castle had 
been forced to surrender, and the Welsh retired 
before the advance of the main army. 

The earl of Warwick gained much prestige during 
this war. A Welsh contingent he had surprised in a 
valley formed into a square, and with lances fixed 
defied the onset of his cavalry. By placing bowmen 
between the horses he broke the wall of lances and 
almost annihilated the Welshmen. 

The king spent Christmas at Conway, directing 
the advance of his army into Carnarvon and Anglesey, 
and supervising the building of the new castle at 
Beaumaris, from which Anglesey was henceforth to 
be governed. Tradition will have it that there was 
to be one other great flare on the mountains, and 
the fight for Welsh independence was over. When 
Edward's army retired Madoc appeared again, an 
army gathered around him as if by magic, and he 
began to march towards England. Vague traditions 
of earlier and greater leaders were associated in a 
confused way with him. On his way through the 
rnarch lordships, he was joined by the Welsh tenants, 
and his army increased as he defeated one lord 
marcher after another, took possession of Oswestry, 
threatened Shrewsbury. The march lords, fearing a 
rising of their tenants, made an effort to crush hi-m. 
A bitterly-fought battle went against Madoc, and at 



214 ^^^ WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

Cevn Digoll, haunted by s'o many traditions of lost 
battles and ruined causes, the last champions of 
Welsh independence were crushed. There can be 
no doubt of the fact that Madoc submitted or was 
captured, and that he was placed in the Tower of 
London ; and one chronicler states that the French, 
if they invaded England, intended to make him 
prince of Wales. 

The meteoric advance of Madoc was watched with 
a suddenly aroused hope and with wavering loyalty 
by the chieftains of the principality as well as by the 
tenants of the marches. His disappearance made 
them fall back, in despair, to acquiescence in the 
new system of county court and taxation by sheriff. 
When Madoc passed into the Tower of London there 
seemed to be a kind of vague understanding between 
the two sides that the fight was now over. 

On one side the king's measures became less harsh. 
It is true that there were some acts of blind ferocity. 
The burning of Strata Florida was an act committed 
in a rage against the stubborn resistance of Cardigan- 
shire. The inhuman punishment of Maelgwn Vychan 
was probably due to the bitter racial feeling in Pem- 
broke land. The king's prisons were filled with Welsh 
chieftains, but there was none of the wholesale con- 
fiscation and outburst of savage vengeance which 
followed the previous war." The king felt that there 
was no further danger. Gwenllian, the only daughter 
of Llywelyn, was safe at Sempringham. He need 
fear no other heir to the power or popularity of 
the lords of Snowdon. The castles, from Rhuddlan 
to Caerphilly, were as perfect as the military ingenuity 



THE LAST DREAM OF INDEPENDENCE 21 5 

of the time could make them. Justice and sheriff 
kept an eye on the bard and on his now sorely 
reduced patron. And the Welsh had, in one case at 
least, preferred the king to their lord. The men of 
Glamorgan who had risen with Morgan submitted on 
condition that they were to hold their lands, not of 
the earl of Gloucester, but of the king himself 

The Welsh saw that resistance was hopeless. 
Llywelyn had left no heir, the birds of Savaddan 
knew no other Griffith or Rees, and who else could 
lead to anything but defeat? It was seen that, 
after all, the king might enforce justice. Years of 
plenty had followed the conquest. Commerce was 
growing ; intercourse with England became more 
frequent. One can almost believe the English 
chronicler who said that the Welsh began to amass 
wealth and would not put it in jeopardy. 

A fantastic plot, unknown to them, was made for 
the recovery of their independence. In spite of its 
early conquest by the Normans, Morgannwg re- 
mained as Welsh in spirit as any part of Wales. 
If less active in the way of rebelling and fighting 
battles, its poets gave its history a glamour that 
captivated its Norman lords. And it was Sir 
Thomas Tuberville that dreamt the last dream of 
Welsh independence. He was taken prisoner in 
Gascony, and carried by the French to Paris. There 
he promised to involve the king of England in war in 
the whole of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales 
at the same time. The French fleet was to seize a 
port that he would have ready. Tuberville's reward 
was to be the principality of Wales. He came to 



2l6 THE WILL OF THE CONQUEROR 

England ; his plot was discovered. He was dragged 
through the streets of London at the tails of horses 
to the gibbet, as Davydd had been at Shrewsbury 
and Rees at York, and his head was placed on the 
Tower of London. 

The restless activity of the country, over-populated 
in so pastoral a stage, found employment elsewhere. 
The Welsh began to cross the borders and the seas 
in thousands. At first they did not gain a good 
name for themselves, or for their country. They 
became the mercenaries of the next two centuries, 
and they have been buried in hundreds on the battle- 
fields of France, Scotland, and England. They did 
not care for what leader they fought, or for what 
cause. They generally fought for the king of Eng- 
land, but would have preferred fighting against him. 
Their old faithful devotion to their own princes gave 
place to a wild spirit of adventure that was not 
trammelled by qualities that would spoil the career 
of a pirate or leader of mercenaries. Edward first 
discovered their value ; he saw that their skill as 
bowmen and wielders of lances could be used to 
break the charge of mailed knights and to complete 
their discomfiture. The king was glad to be able to 
take them out of Wales ; their departure lessened 
the power of the chiefs and ensured the peace of the 
country. 

A great multitude of them relieved the English 
footmen who were besieging the castle of Edinburgh 
in 1296. In the following year they followed the 
king, a rebellious and undisciplined rabble, to Flan- 
ders. They wished to set Ghent on fire, but Edward 



THE WELSH MERCENARIES 21/ 

prevented them. They then spread devastation 
in the country around it. The king hanged some 
of them and imprisoned others. The Welshmen 
broke his prison, released their companions, and 
carried them in triumph on their shoulders. Edward, 
in a towering rage, wanted to surround and massacre 
them all, but wiser counsels prevailed. At the battle 
of Falkirk, in 1298, it was uncertain whether the 
ten thousand Welsh mercenaries would obey the 
order to attack Wallace, or passively watch the for- 
tunes of the day, or point their arrows towards 
Edward. Finally, in spite of their sullen hatred for 
him who commanded, they attacked the retreating 
Scots, covering the ground with dead bodies " as 
thick as snow in winter." 

It was from this disorderly crowd of Welsh archers 
and spearmen, however, that the art of the war of 
the next century was developed, with very important 
political results. The longbow, which had failed to 
preserve its independence for Wales, was to make 
the armies of England famous throughout Europe. 




XII 



AN ENGLISH PRINCE OF WALES 



When Edward of Carnarvon was made Prince of 
Wales and earl of Chester, February 7, 1301, an 
English chronicler wrote that the Welsh heard the 
news with great joy, comforting themselves with the 
thought that he was their lawful lord, having been 
born among them, and not their conqueror. They 
remembered Edward I. with his drooping eyelid and 
scowling suspicion, as the destroyer of their liberty ; 
they knew the open countenance and easy good 
nature of his son, who had never done them harm. 
The old Edward, before his death, collected the 
chains and the manacles in the kingdom into a 
huge pile in the Tower of London ; to Welshmen, 
as to Scotchmen, his memory was connected with 
chains and slavery. But they looked upon young 
Edward as a generous prince, who would lead them 
into freedom. Edward believed that he was very 
popular among them. When he became king of 
England he reminded them that he had been born 
in Wales, and declared that it was his wish to win 



EAGLE AND BUTTERFLY 2ig 

the affection of his countrymen by granting them 
favours. He redressed many of their grievances ; 
and, when fleeing from his impossible task, it was 
among them that he sought his last refuge. 

In disputing the claim of Balliol to the t'hrone of 
Scotland, John de Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, 
another claimant, said that the Prince of Wales, in 
his time, held more freely of the king of England 
than the lords of Scotland did, " for he had corona- 
tion with the garland, and was placed in his seat by 
bishops." The new Prince of Wales was not a prince 
as soon as he was born, he needed creation and 
investiture. He was the heir apparent to the throne 
of England, so that Wales might always belong to 
the king of England, to be granted by him from 
time to time to his heir. 

Between the time when he became Prince of Wales 
and his accession to the throne of England in 1307, 
Edward's life and that of his father were as unlike 
each other as the life of a butterfly and that of an 
eagle in Eryri. The wide scope of the father's 
activity is in strange contrast to the few anxieties of 
his son, — to get raisins in time for dinner, to get a 
white greyhound bitch, and to get Gilbert de Clare 
and Piers Gaveston as playmates. He was so thrift- 
less that it is probable that his father did not allow 
him to squander much of the revenues of Wales. 
Of the stern determination of his father — shown in 
his conquest of Wales and in his injunction that he 
was not to be buried until Scotland had been con- 
quered — Edward had but little. He pined alter- 
nately for the vocation of a smith or a thatcher 



THE POPULARITY OF EDWARD II. 221 

and for the splendour of a great court pageant He 
showed the stubbornness of a spoilt child in his 
affection for favourites and in his dislike for the 
nobles. He kept sight of his father's policy in a 
weak and irresolute way ; but the nobles, almost 
as incapable as he and as selfish as his favourites, 
made it as impossible for him to rule England as it 
was to conquer Scotland. 

It was a wonder to an English chronicler a hundred 
years later why Wales clung to Edward H. when 
Scotland had rebelled against him and when England 
had cast him away, why its poets had written elegies on 
him in their own tongue, and why it still remembered 
him with affection. 

One reason, undoubtedly, was Edward's frequent 
boast that he was a Welshman. In sending Lewis of 
Evreux a fine trotting palfrey and harriers that could 
discover a hare sleeping, he offers to send him any- 
thing out of Wales, some of its wild people if he 
likes, who can w^ell teach the management of horse 
and hound to the young sons of great lords. They 
played the crowth, they sang well, one of them was 
said to be so strong that he could straighten a horse- 
shoe. Sometimes Echvard w^ould reward them as 
Llywelyn or Rees would have done ; sometimes he 
would send them to be an unwelcome charge on some 
monastery. 

During the whole of his reign a struggle was going 
on in Wales between the new official class and the 
conquered people. When the king interfered it was 
in the interest of the Welsh freemen. 

Fines were levied harshly and unjustly. The 



222 AN ENGLISH PRINCE OF WALES 

ainobr was the money due to a lord when a free- 
man's daughter was given in marriage, and it was 
also a fine for incontinence. The amount was defined 
by custom. In some parts it was very heavy, in other 
parts light, in Arvon it was not taken at all. No fine 
was so capable of abuse on the part of the officials, 
and no abuse was so bitterly resented. It was forced 
from those who had never paid it ; it was made the 
excuse for extortion after a long time, vv^hen the 
accused could not prove his innocence. One of the 
ordinances of Edward II. enacted that the ainobr 
claimed must be the customary sum, and that it must 
be claimed within a year. 

Freemen were placed under burdens which were 
due only from villeins and outlanders. The villein 
paid a hereditary tribute, the stranger a fine in 
exchange for the prince's protection. The tendency 
now was to break down the distinction between free- 
men and strangers, and even between freemen and 
their own villeins. The levying of a tax by the 
sheriff from a freeman was, from the Welsh point of 
view, to put the burden of a serf on a free man. 
Edward ordained that the customary taxes due from 
villeins and strangers were to be taken as they were 
taken by the princes of Wales, and that freemen 
were not to be taxed unless the ordinary revenue 
was insufficient. 

Welshmen were denied justice in civil matters, 
because the jury was English and ignorant of the 
customs of Wales. Edward II. ordained that suits 
between Welshmen must be decided by a Welsh jury 
and according to Welsh law ; suits between Welsh- 



THE ORDINANCES OF EDWARD II. 223 

men and Englishmen by a jury composed of an equal 
number of Welshmen and Englishmen ; and suits 
between Englishmen as before. 

Th.^ gwestva — the freeman's commuted obligation 
to maintain his lord when on progress — was made 
excessive. The bailiffs took, not what was offered, but 
what they thought ought to be offered. Edward II. 
enacted that the bailiff must either take what was 
offered or a fixed sum of five shillings. 

The superabundance of bailiffs was a very heavy 
and a very unwelcome burden. Edward II. ordained 
that their number was to be lessened, and that the 
justiciar should fix upon the number of bailiffs that 
would be of most service to king and subject. 

The disqualifications of English villeins were 
applied to Welsh freemen — their sons were not 
allowed to take orders without a licence. Edward 
ordains that any freeman, having more than one son, 
can allow one of them to take orders without licence 
from king or justiciar. 

It is clear that the work of the king's officers in 
Wales was difficult, and that it opened up innumer- 
able possibilities of abuse — from ignorance, want of 
tact, or dishonesty. The conquered people were 
exceedingly sensitive in their conservatism ; the 
officials despised what they did not understand. In 
spite of all his follies, the Welsh of the principality 
remembered that Edward II., as prince of Wales and 
as king of England, had tried to get justice done. 

Between the conquest and the reign of Henry VIII. 
Edward is the only king who summoned members 
from Wales to his Parliaments. In 1322, when he 



224 ^^ ENGLISH PRINCE OF WALES 

was at the height of his power, twenty-four repre- 
sentatives were summoned from South Wales and 
twenty-four from North Wales. In his last Parlia- 
ment in 1326, the three counties of North Wales 
were represented by eighteen Welshmen, and their 
boroughs by six Englishmen. 

As Edward II. was looked upon as the protector 
of the tenant against his own officials, in the march 
he was looked upon as his champion against the 
Mortimers. At the beginning of his reign there 
were two Mortimers whose rapacious energy, 
insatiable ambition for power and land, mental 
power and licentious lives, made them the terror 
of the borderland. The uncle, Roger of Chirk, was 
old in crime. He had followed Edward I. to the 
Scotch wars, though the king knew him too well to 
trust him much out of his sight ; at the accession of 
Edward II. he became justice of North Wales. The 
nephew, Roger of Wigmore, ran a wonderful career 
of danger, adventure, and crime ; but the adultery 
and the murder which were the horror of even that 
callous age cannot hide the brilliant ability of this 
first earl of March, who dethroned a king, and ruled 
England in more than royal magnificence as the 
paramour of a queen. 

The young Roger had been knighted at the same 
time as Edward II., and had ransomed himself from 
the wardship of Piers Gaveston. His wife brought 
him Ludlow, broad lands in the southern marches, 
and a claim to vast estates in Ireland. The energy 
with which he conquered territory was only equalled 
by the foresight with which he planned the extension 



GILBERT DE CLARE 225 

of the Mortimer interest by agreements and marriages. 
He was hated and feared on the Welsh borders by 
all who had privilege or land to lose, but by none 
more bitterly than by the Welsh tenants, whose 
ancient rights of pasture on the mountains and ideas 
of the ownership of land in the valleys, from Chirk 
to Ewyas Lacy, were ruthlessly disregarded by 
Roger Mortimer and his allies. He played his part 
in English policy so deftly until 1314 that the king 
did not interfere with him. But an event occurred in 
that year which brought Edward H. into closer con- 
tact with Wales, and which brought about a struggle 
between him and his powerful vassal for supremacy 
west of the Severn. 

Of the companions of Edward's youth, those that 
played the most important part during his reign 
were Piers Gaveston, Gilbert de Clare, and Hugh le 
Despenser. Gaveston was the son of a Gascon knight, 
brave and not without ability ; but his insolence and 
avarice united the barons in opposition to the in- 
fatuated king. When he had been beheaded on 
Blacklow Hill by the barons, in the summer of 13 12, 
Gilbert de Clare protected the king from his angry 
opponents. After the death of Gilbert at the battle 
of Bannockburn in 13 14, Edward's other favourite, 
Hugh le Despenser the younger, guided his policy. 
Gilbert was the king's nephew ; Gaveston and Hugh 
le Despenser had married Gilbert's sisters, Margaret 
and Eleanor, daughters of Gilbert the Red. 

Though he was but twenty-four when he died, 
Gilbert de Clare had shown ability, moderation, and 
consistent statesmanship that were very rare during 

16 



226 AN ENGLISH PRINCE OF WALES 

Edward's reign. As the grandson of Edward I., and 
heir to the vast estates of the earls of Gloucester in 
England and Wales and Ireland, Gilbert de Clare 
was one of the most powerful men of the time. 
With chivalry bordering on self-sacrifice, with loyalty 
to great traditions, with wisdom which sometimes 
made him hesitate from excess of caution and then 
plunge into headlong action when he felt his honour 
or sincerity doubted — the most striking figure of the 
reign is the last great lord of Glamorgan. He ruled 
Glamorgan wisely ; through the Welsh chiefs in 
the hilly districts of the north, and through the 
descendants of the Norman conquerors in the vale 
district of the south. He had led eight hundred 
men from Glamorgan to the Scotch wars when seven- 
teen years of age ; he had moderated the policy of 
the lords who were appointed ordainers in 131 1 to 
deal with the helpless king ; he had secured the 
return of Gaveston from exile and given him stern 
counsels of moderation ; he had established some 
kind of peace between the king and Lancaster, the 
leader of the barons. In 13 14 he followed the king 
and his tame lion with a contingent of five hundred 
men to Scotland, where he led the vanguard of the 
army. On June 24 he advised Edward not to risk a 
battle until his troops had rested. Edward, seized by 
one of those fits of ungovernable fury which he had 
inherited from his father, taunted him with cowardice 
and treachery. Gilbert rushed into battle, and sacri- 
ficed in the shock of battle the life that would have 
been so valuable to the king. In the disastrous 
battle of Bannockburn the one cause of pride to the 



LLYWELYN BEEN 22/ 

southerners was the desperate stand made by the 
Lord of Glamorgan and his men. 

Gilbert left no son ; his heiresses were his three 
sisters — Eleanor, wife of Hugh le Despenser ; Mar- 
garet, widow of Gaveston, now wife of Hugh 
d'Audley ; and Elizabeth, wife of Roger d'Amory. 
While it was yet uncertain whether Gilbert would 
have a son, Glamorgan fell to the custody of the 
king. Edward appointed one of the lords of the 
Vale of Glamorgan, Payn Turberville, steward. No 
more unfortunate choice could be made, for Turber- 
ville immediately took advantage of his position to 
oust the Welsh chiefs from the north, and to replace 
them with Englishmen. Among those removed was 
Llywelyn Bren, the popular Welsh chief of Seng- 
henydd. Llywelyn's heated protest was reported to 
the king as a threat of rebellion. He went to the 
king in person, and his reception by the hasty Edward 
was such that he returned to Glamorgan, and the 
Welsh of Glamorgan again rose in widespread revolt. 
Thousands of aggrieved freemen joined him. His 
first attack was on Caerphilly, the most elaborate 
of all the new castles, which overlooked the western 
plains of Glamorgan from a spur of Senghenydd. 
At the other end of Glamorgan the officials and 
English settlers fled to a man. Turberville looked 
helplessly from his castle at Coyty on the storm he 
had created. The rich vale was devastated, and the 
spirit of rebellion was embittered by memories of 
lost land and violated privilege. 

The quelling of the rebellion was entrusted to 
Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, who had led 



THE DESPENSERS IN GLAMORGAN 229 

the vanguard at Bannockburn with Gilbert de Clare, 
and who was lord of Brecon, being a descendant of 
Bernard and Nest. He was joined by the forces of 
all who had tenants in Wales — by the Mortimers, by 
Henry of Lancaster. Llywelyn Bren did not lead 
his followers into useless slaughter, he surrendered to 
the earl of Hereford, and remained in prison from 
the summer of 1316 to the summer of 13 17. It is 
possible that, in view of future operations in Glamor- 
gan, he was won over by his conquerors — Hereford, 
Mortimer, and Lancaster, and they made the king 
promise to deal mercifully with him. They were 
afraid that Despenser would get Glamorgan. 

The younger Despenser, whose grandfather had 
died with Simon de Montfort on the field of Evesham, 
and whose father had stood by Gaveston, had become 
very faithful to the king when he saw that his brother- 
in-law's estates were to be partitioned. He was the 
companion of the king's childhood, and had been 
knighted on the same day. He had his eye on the 
rich lordship of Glamorgan, with its magnificent 
castles and abbeys. When he obtained it he saw all 
kinds of desirable Naboth's vineyards around it. He 
wanted the king to resume grants that had been 
made to the Mortimers. He wanted to take Gower 
from the husband of the heiress of William de Braose, 
because he had taken possession of it without the 
king's license — a robber's reason that was enough to 
band all the feudal lords of the kingdom in opposi- 
tion to the king. 

The Mortimers and the Despensers — now neigh- 
bours — were at deadly feud. Despenser remembered 



230 AN ENGLISH PRINCE OF WALES 

his grandfather's death at Evesham through the 
treachery of the Mortimers ; the Mortimers remem- 
bered how Despenser's machinations had robbed 
them of land. In the spring of 1321 the Mortimers 
invaded Glamorgan, and took Newport and Cardiff. 
Lancaster maintained their cause, and the barons 
dispossessed the Despensers of their land, and drove 
them into exile. Mortimer was now all-powerful in 
Wales. 

The causes that had driven Glamorgan to revolt 
were also at work in distant Anglesey. The justice 
of Snowdon was Roger Mortimer, the third son of 
Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, and the uncle of the 
Mortimer who gives so much of its daring wickedness 
to the end of the reign of Edward II. He had built 
the castle of Chirk, overlooking the valley of the Dee 
on the one hand and the rich plain of Maelor on the 
other ; and his sympathies, in spite of his descent 
from Llywelyn, was not with the Welsh, over whom 
he had such arbitrary power. Indignation at the dis- 
regard of privilege and new exactions, at favouritism 
shown to strangers and at the contemptuous treat- 
ment as slaves of men who had always been free, 
drove the farmers of Anglesey into revolt. Sir 
Griffith Llwyd, a descendant of Ednyved, the minister 
of Llywelyn the Great, and the chieftain of Trevgar- 
nedd in Anglesey and of Dinorwic in Arvon, rose in 
revolt. As in Glamorgan, the power of the lords of 
the marches in the north was threatened by a revolt 
that had the bitterness of a social struggle and the 
enthusiasm of a national rising. Sir Griffith Llwyd 
had planned a great rising, and had made overtures 



THE KING IN WALES 23 1 

to Edward Bruce. He was crushed, however, by the 
lords of the marches, and the bards of Arvon bewailed 
his hopeless captivity at Rhuddlan. 

In 1322 Edward II. had one of his sudden fits 
of energetic and determined action — the old Edward 
seemed to be aroused in him at times. Early in that 
year he approached Wales. He meant to enter 
Glamorgan, but he found the Severn guarded by 
the Mortimers — at Gloucester, at Worcester, at 
Bridgnorth they faced him. But Lancaster did not 
come to their help. The king crossed the river at 
Shrewsbury, and the Mortimers, not daring to oppose 
him, surrendered. Fortune favoured him at last. 
Hereford fell at the battle of Boroughbridge, 
Lancaster was beheaded at Pontefract, the Mortimers 
were put in prison. Roger Mortimer of Chirk died 
in the Tower ; his nephew, imitating the attempt of 
Griffith, made a daring escape, and fled to France to 
work the ruin of the king. 

Edward's policy, like that of his father, was to 
crush the power of the barons. His policy in Wales 
and Ireland gives some colour to the theory that 
he meant to base his power on his popularity among 
the people, and that he meant to substitute for 
baronial anarchy the rule of a strong minister — a 
Gaveston or a Despenser. Unfortunately his affec- 
tion for his favourites blinded Edward to their faults 
as statesmen ; and, if he had a policy, it was sacrificed 
without hesitation to the personal interests of his 
favourite minister. 

In 1323, after the defeat of Lancaster and the 
barons at the battle of Boroughbridge, Edward's 



232 AN ENGLISH PRINCE OF WALES 

new-born energy brought him again into the march 
of Wales, from Lancaster's tenants to those of the 
Mortimers. He passed from place to place, making 
inquiries as to public offenders, not forgetting the 
oppressors of the common people. But here, again, 
he sacrificed his own popularity to the interests of 
" a well-beloved valet " whose faithfulness was not to 
be unbroken ; for in the summer of 1309, Griffith ab 
Owen, the last of the old princes of Powys, died. 
According to Welsh law, his uncle Griffith ought to 
have succeeded him. But he had left one sister, 
Hawys, and she was given in marriage to John 
Charlton, a Shropshire man, and a favourite of the 
king, who thus obtained Powys Castle and the regal 
rights of the old princes of Upper Powys. Griffith 
and a few jealous neighbours besieged him in his 
castle ; but Edward came, and determined in favour 
of Charlton. At first Charlton imitated the policy of 
the king, and tried to conciliate the people of Welsh- 
pool and Machynlleth. Griffith clamoured for his 
inheritance to the day of his death ; but Charlton, 
whether fighting against the king at Boroughbridge 
or supplying him with Welsh spearmen, managed to 
retain the magnificent dowry which Hawys had 
brought him. It may be that an effigy in the stained 
glass window in St. Mary's Church at Shrewsbury 
is a picture, dating from that time, of this first Lord 
Charlton of Powys. 

The same baneful sacrifice of policy to favouritism 
is seen in the history of Edward in Glamorgan. 
His true policy towards Wales was laid down in the 
ordinances of 131 5, in which he appeared as the 



THE RESENTMENT OF GLAMORGAN 233 

champion of the rights and privileges left to the 
Welsh under the Statute of Rhuddlan. He meant 
to conciliate the Welsh of Glamorgan ; but the 
interests of Despenser intervened. During the 
struggle between the husbands of the three Gloucester 
heiresses, Despenser had probably suspected Llywelyn 
Bren of sympathy with the baronial enemies of the 
king, among whom Roger d'Amory fought against 
Despenser to the last. By a mad act of folly, when 
Glamorgan had become his in 13 17, he fell upon 
Llywelyn, through whom the Welsh could have been 
easily conciliated, took possession of his estates, and 
dragged him through the streets of Cardiff as Davydd 
had been dragged through the streets of Shrewsbury 
to an almost equally horrible death. 

When Edward was again a fugitive before the 
escaped Mortimer, now helped by the unfaithful 
queen, it was to Caerphilly and Neath, of all places — 
where Llywelyn's memory was most revered — that 
the king came to seek shelter and assistance. The 
men of Glamorgan, who had so readily followed 
Gilbert de Clare to his aid thirteen years before, 
now listened to his appeal with sullen indifference. 
Followed by the relentless Mortimer, the unpitying 
hate of his adulterous queen, and the subtle and 
revengeful Adam of Orleton, he wandered from place 
to place in Glamorgan until he was discovered by 
the new earl of Lancaster and a Welsh chief whose 
attachment had been sacrificed to the interests of 
Despenser. Welsh tradition makes him wander from 
hamlet to abbey, disguised as a Welsh peasant, until 
he gave himself up to save his friends. From the 



234 ^^ ENGLISH PRINCE OF WALES 

castle of Llantrisant, which looks down on the Vale 
of Glamorgan, Despenser was sent to the queen at 
Hereford, who had him immediately executed. The 
unfortunate king was reserved for a more unhappy 
fate. Uncrowned, hurried secretly from place to 
place, ill-treated in a way compared with which 
murder would have been merciful, placed in a 
chamber made foetid by the exhalation from dead 
bodies in a charnel house beneath, in those days of 
pestilence, he was finally murdered at Berkeley in a 
way that made his appalling cries — for he was tall 
and strong like his father — awake shuddering sleepers 
in the town below. 

Gray makes the mythical bard who frightened 
Edward I. during his march in Wales, when Red 
Gilbert stood aghast and Mortimer couched his 
quivering lance, call upon the conqueror to 

*' Mark the year and mark the night, 
When Severn shall re-echo with affright 
The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roof that ring." 

But the bards of Wales, the bards whom Edward 
had threatened, mourned the fate of his son. To 
them he had been a just protector against the 
oppressors whom his father had placed over them. 
Had he the energy to crush the selfish barons who 
made good government impossible, from no part of 
his dominions could he have drawn more willing 
armies than from his native land. The incoherence 
of his life is, after all, more lovable than the 
supremely practical selfishness of the barons who 
tortured him in life as in death. His own folly made 



THE WELSH VIEW OF EDWARD II. 235 

his reign a strange succession of useless victories and 
barren defeats — no great measure followed his rise or 
fall. But still one associates dim visions of contented 
Welsh freemen, of prosperous English citizens, of 
parliament as a source of justice to high and low — 
visions like broken masses of clouds on his native 
mountains — with the first English prince of Wales. 




XIII 



THE LONGBOW AND THE BLACK DEATH 



Two events caught the imagination of Welshmen 
in the middle of the fourteenth century. One was 
the coronation of the Black Prince as Prince of 
Wales ; the other was the coming of the dreaded 
Black Death. 

The Black Prince was created Prince of Wales by 
his father, Edward III., in May, 1343. Edward III. 
was as popular in Wales as his father had been. His 
attack on Mortimer, and the terrible punishment he 
inflicted on his father's murderer, had pleased the 
Welsh, who remembered Mortimer's oppression on 
the marches. The new prince of Wales was regarded 
by them as the heir to the just and humane policy of 
Edward II. The ceremony of coronation took place 
in a parliament held at Westminster. The young 
prince — he was not quite thirteen — was crowned with 
a chaplet of gold made in the form of a garland, 
a gold ring was set on his finger, and a sceptre of 
silver was placed in his hand. His revenues were 

those of the principality of Wales ; and he was to get 

236 



THE HOME OF THE LONGBOW 237 

an army from Wales, of archers and spearmen who 
could be persuaded by love of adventure and of 
plunder to leave their native mountains, to bring 
down the pride of the steel-clad chivalry of the 
Continent. 

The home of the longbow is the south-east corner 
of Wales, the well-wooded rolling plain of Gwent 
and Morgannwg. Gerald, who had a keen eye to 
everything relating to war in spite of his boasted 
devotion to Church and literature, saw instances at 
Abergavenny of the striking skill of the Gwent 
archers. Arrow-heads were still embedded in an 
oaken door, left there to prove the wonderful 
penetrating power of the shaft. Two soldiers had 
taken refuge in a tower, and the arrows which sped 
after them pierced oak planks four fingers thick. 
One of the knights of William de Braose had a 
narrow escape — the arrow penetrated through his 
coat of mail, through his mail breeches, through his 
thigh, and through his wooden saddle, pinning him to 
his mortally wounded horse. Another knight had 
his hip pierced, through his armour, by an arrow 
which went right into his saddle. Turning his horse 
round, another arrow passed through his other side, 
so that he was fixed to his saddle on both sides. 

Skill in archery was universal in Wales. The 
Welsh crusader on the plains of Asia Minor, the 
Welsh student at Oxford, the Welsh poet on his 
journey from patron to patron, all carried the in- 
separable bow. The greatest Welsh poet of the 
fourteenth century describes himself sitting on a 
knoll, awaiting the coming of Gwen. Suddenly he 



238 THE LONGBOW AND THE BLACK DEATH 

detected the shining red coat of a fox moving 
stealthily through the thicket. The poet thought 
he would tinge the bright red skin with a deeper 
red by means of a piercing black-tipped shaft from 
his bow. The bow snapped into three pieces, and 
the harmless arrow fell at the poet's feet. He 
consoled himself by putting into perfect verse a 
delightfully accurate description of the fox he had 
missed. 

Gerald said that the bows he saw in Gwent, in 
spite of the great penetrating power of their arrows 
at short range, were made of rough ugly elm, and not 
of yew. The poet's bow was of yew, and of expensive 
workmanship. The yew bow must have been common 
throughout Wales. In the laws of Howel the yew is 
the most valuable of all trees ; and, as late as Tudor 
times, Tudur Aled asks, in lamenting the death of a 
squire — 

*' Who can repeat his exploits to-day? 
Who knows so well the strength of yew ? " 

The rapidity of the movements of the light-armed 
Welsh armies, the ease with which their horsemen 
dismounted and fought on foot, the deadly precision 
and power of the arrow, accounted for the great loss 
of life inflicted on heavily-armed, disciplined soldiers 
in the wars of independence. The lance and arrow 
had another advantage : they were so light that 
they did not impede flight, and they made pursuit 
dangerous. The hasty retreat of the Welsh when 
worsted in the shock of battle was excellently covered 
by the archers, and their skill in retiring accounts for 



THE WELSH ARCHERS 239 

the small loss of life. They had too much sense of 
art to imitate the methods of a wild boar at bay. 

Their tactics were at first despised by their enemies, 
and then adopted. The long bow was gradually 
introduced into the English army ; horsemen were 
taught to fight on foot or to wait their opportunity 
behind the archers and spearmen. The victories of 
the Black Prince justified the innovations. The 
Welsh arrows had failed to save the cause of English 
liberty at Evesham and the cause of Welsh inde- 
pendence at Aberconway ; they were to help 
Edward III. to hang the scourge of Heaven over 
the proud lords of France — 

" Amazement in his van, with flight combined, 
And Sorrow's faded form, and SoHtude behind." 

Three thousand five hundred Welsh archers 
followed their Black Prince in the attack on P>ance 
in the summer of 1346, and as many more came from 
the Welsh lordships. When the English army drew 
up on the gentle slope of Cressy and faced the vast 
French army, it contained five thousand Welsh 
archers and spearmen — one-fourth of the whole 
army. Many of them were with Mortimer in the 
rear division ; but the majority were with the English 
archers in the division on which the first French 
attack would fall. Before the English and Welsh 
archers the Genoese crossbowmen withered away 
into a terror-stricken, disorderly remnant. The 
French chivalry, in charge after charge, went down 
on that day. King John of Bohemia and his knights 
alone succeeded, after a desperate attempt, in reaching 



240 THE LONGBOW AND THE BLACK DEATH 

the Black Prince, to meet certain death. The long- 
bow had enabled an army of men on foot to repulse 
three times their number of the best bowmen and 
cavalry that Europe could produce. The appalling 
loss of life among the French, compared with the 
trifling loss of the English, made the longbow 
dreaded in the remotest corners of France. 

Once during the long struggle the Black Prince 
was thrown to the ground. It was the banner of 
Wales that was thrown over him while his men-at- 
arms hurled back the assailants who had escaped 
the deadly arrows of the archers. It was after this 
famous battle that the Black Prince gave his successors 
in the principality a crest and a motto. The three 
feathers were probably suggested by the ostrich 
feather or vulture wing on the helmet of the king 
of Bohemia, whom he saw leading the tumultuous 
mass of charging knights at Cressy. A Welsh poet 
who celebrated the exploits of Edward III., some 
thirty or forty years later, says that, at the battle of 
Cressy, the valour of the English army caused living 
vultures to perch on John of Bohemia. The Black 
Prince of Wales wavered between two mottoes — 
" Houinoiit " and " Ich die?t!' The former means 
" high mood," the other " I serve." Both of them 
are in the language of his beloved mother's native 
Hainault. He chose the nobler motto. 

All through the reign of Edward III., Welshmen 
in crowds fought in the French wars, with Sir John 
Grey of Ruthin at Agincourt, with Richard, earl of 
Arundel, and with John de Hastings, earl of Pem- 
broke in many battles before he was taken prisoner 
by the Spaniards. 



OWEN OF WALES 2\\ 

There were Welshmen fighting in France against 
the Black Prince. France has always been the home 
of exiled and irreconcilable British patriots, from 
Owen of Wales to Patrick Sarsfield. Owen of 
Wales had come to the king of France to complain 
of the injuries done to him by the king of England, 
who had put his father to death and had seized his 
possessions. He was retained in the French service, 
and his exploits are among the most interesting 
military movements of the Hundred Years' War. 
He had probably a good number of his countrymen 
serving with him as free lances, including a valiant 
priest. He fought at the battle of Poictiers, gave 
advice to Bertrand du Guesclin, and was employed 
in many important expeditions on land and sea. 
The great aim of his life was to restore the inde- 
pendence of Wales by the help of France and Spain. 
Twice at least he thought that his dream was on the 
eve of being realised. In 1369 he and John Wynn 
sailed from Harfleur with a fleet given by Charles V. 
of France, but very rough December weather drove 
them back. In May, 1372, Owen put to sea again 
from the same port. He now declared that he was 
going to wrest Wales, to the crown of which he was 
heir, from the king of England. A Spanish fleet was 
to join him in the channel. While waiting for the 
Spaniards, Owen attacked Guernsey, and reduced the 
island except Castle Cornet. Before the castle was 
reduced Owen was summoned back to France, and 
he departed, but he has a great place still in Guernsey 
legend. He was to blockade La Rochelle with two 
fleets. When going to Spain to lead the Spanish 

17 



242 THE LONGBOW AND THE BLACK DEATH 

ships he was told at a hotel at Santander that a 
famous English prisoner had just been brought into 
the house. Owen recognised the earl of Pembroke, 
and asked the captive bitterly, " Are you come to 
this country to do me homage for the lands you hold 
of me in Wales, of which I am the heir, and which 
your king has deprived me of, through the advice 
of evil counsellors ? " While investing La Rochelle 
he landed with four hundred determined men, made 
a dash at the English army encamped at Soubise 
on a pitch dark night, and captured the Captal de 
Buch, the famous Gascon ally of the English. After 
the death of the Black Prince he helped Bertrand 
du Guesclin and Louis of Anjou to drive the English 
out of Gascony. When he was besieging Mortagne- 
sur-Mer, with an army of Bretons and Poitevins, an 
English spy called John Lambe came to his camp 
with pretended news from Wales. Having told 
Owen that his countrymen would rise and welcome 
him as their prince, Lambe assassinated him and 
made his escape into the beleaguered town. This 
was in 1378. Another leader was to dream the same 
dreams as the disinherited prince, Owen of Wales. 
But Owen Glendower was not more than nineteen 
years old at that time. 

In a country like Wales, where the sheep-runs and 
pasture lands are so extensive and the wheat area 
so small, over-population, where no emigration is 
possible, is unavoidable. During the Plundred Years' 
War wages were lower in Wales than in England, 
but wheat was as dear at Caerleon or Cowbridge 
as it was at Oxford or London ; and cattle and pigs 



THE BREAKING OF OLD BONDS 243 

were as dear in Monmouth as they were in England, 
and horses not much cheaper. The people were 
thick on the land, and the foreign wars tempted 
thousands and thousands to follow each other to 
leave their bones on the pestilential battlefields or 
round the ruined castles of southern France. If a 
man became a tailor or a carpenter at Usk, his 
wage would be but twopence a day ; if he threshed 
wheat at Llantrisant he got a halfpenny more ; but 
the wage of the archer rose rapidly from twopence 
to fourpence, and from fourpence to sixpence, while 
a captain got two shillings a day. The king paid 
more to an archer for sleeping in the shade in his 
castle than he did to a mower who sweated in the 
hayfields of Dyffryn Clwyd. Why should a man toil 
on a hot day, mowing rye at Cilbebyll, if he could 
get better wages for dozing in a watch-tower at 
Haverfordwest ? The mercenaries belonged to many 
classes- — young men full of the spirit of adventure, 
men who escaped from the oppressive surveillance of 
the new bailiff, criminals who wished to escape before 
the sheriff's turn or to get rid of their outlawry 
by shedding the blood of the king's enemies. 

The rule of the new officials tended to free the 
villein from his unwilling bonds to the freemen, as 
it gradually liberated the freeman from his willing 
bonds to his chief Every new idea that the 
mercenaries brought from the wars, holy and unholy ; 
every new way of earning money ; the gradual growth 
of the prosperity of the towns — all tended to make 
classes more equal. But a more terrible liberator 
came with the returned archers to Wales. 



244 THE LONGBOW AND THE BLACK DEATH 

The Black Death reached Wales in an almost 
incredibly short time after making its first appearance 
in England. The rapidity with which it spread was 
one cause of the terror which it had inspired, and 
which made its victims more liable to contract it. It 
only took fourteen years, in those days of slow travel- 
ling, to reach Europe from China. It appeared at 
Bristol in August, 1348, and in the following year it 
came to Wales. It could not have been mistaken for 
any other visitor : the dark blotches told the victim 
how soon he was to die. In Ireland, the Black Death 
mowed down the English, but at first spared the Irish 
of the hills. In Wales it was no respecter of persons. 
It left grass growing in the narrow streets of once 
crowded towns ; it reached the breezy uplands of the 
Berwyn, and left deserted homesteads in the highest 
glens of the Aran. 

The difference between freeman and serf had been 
gradually disappearing for centuries. The English 
Conquest had precipitated the development. Money 
payments were taking the place of service or food 
rents. In South Wales, with its greater complexity 
of life, commutation was almost universal. In the 
more conservative north, the serf was rapidly becom- 
ing free. Sometimes little communities of serfs 
would be enfranchised by charter, as was done by the 
bishop and dean and chapter of St. Asaph in 1335. 
But everywhere, in practice, the difference between 
native and stranger, between freeman and serf, was 
passing away. 

In Wales, as in England, the scarcity of labour, 
caused by the ravages of the Black Death, sent wages 



THE RESULTS OF A MONEY ECONOMY 245 

Up This made the landowners insist on getting 
laboiir service where it was still customary, for the 
commutation money would not be enough to hire 
labourers at the increased wage. Attempts were also 
made to return to the old system of labour rents. 
The serfs had been willing to labour before they 
had known what freedom from everything but paying 
rent was. If they went back to their old labour 
duties now, they would find them less remunerative 
and more irksome : less remunerative because the 
price of labour had gone up, more irksome because 
freedom from them was possible. 

The Norman Conquest and the English Conquest, 
while driving the iron into the soul of the freeman, 
had been a blessing to the serf. When the conquest 
was complete, he found himself free, with many a 
tempting career open to him. There had been a 
mighty silent influence at work, unheeded and not 
understood, all through the years when chieftain 
strove against chieftain, and prince against king. 

That influence was the influence of money, in the 
form of coins. As long as the relations between free- 
man and serf were labour relations, the privileges of 
the one were secured, the slavery of the other hope- 
less. But as soon as the labour duties were expressed 
by mutual consent in terms of money, the serfdom of 
the serf was defined ; when the money was paid he 
was free. 

The labour duties were given their value in money 
when money was very scarce in Wales, and when 
there was great demand for it. During the wars 
against the Normans and the English, the Welsh 



246 THE LONGBOW AND THE BLACK DEATH 

princes must have obtained vast sums of money. 
They had to pay for castle -building, they had to buy 
swords and coats of mail, they had to pay very 
heavy indemnities to the English kings — sometimes 
paid in cattle, it is true, instead of in marks. Their 
standard of comfort was rising, they bought gold 
ornaments and precious stones, and wine and other 
luxuries from abroad. They were very willing, there- 
fore, to take money in lieu of serf labour whenever 
they could get it. 

The labour due was fixed at a low rate. Then 
money flowed into the country — the hire of thousands 
of mercenaries, the price of corn and wool. The 
value of money, therefore, became less, and it became 
more and more easy for the serf to pay it. His rent 
was gradually becoming a merely nominal sum. For 
example, at the present day, there is a charge of a 
few pence on a farm ; in those days it represented 
the full value of it. If, on the other hand, money 
had become scarcer after the fixing of the commu- 
tation for service, the serf would have been unable 
to pay it, and would have sunk back into hopeless 
slavery. 

It is this mighty, silent revolution that is the most 
important part of history. While a king kills his 
child hostages, while a baron blinds his rival in a 
dungeon, while thousands are locked together in use- 
less battle, while garrisons are put to the sword in 
blind fury or prisoners beheaded before besieged walls 
in cold blood, beneath all the insignificant facts 
which dazzle or attract or appal us in the sordid 
history of individual sefishness — the unconquerable 



A GREAT REVOLUTION 24/ 

spirit of freedom was silently and irresistibly raising 
the weak and the wronged. 

The suddenness with which its meaning was 
realised by lord and serf alike, is due to the Black 
Death. This terrible visitor awakened the lord to 
the fact that his power was in danger; it awakened 
the serf to the fact that he was free. 

The longbow and the Black Death had their share 
in ushering in the new period. By means of the long- 
bow, lord and peasant were made almost equal on the 
field of battle ; the equality was perfected by the dis- 
covery of gunpowder a little later on. Before the 
time of the longbow, the castle was impregnable, 
and the coat of mail impenetrable ; the lord could 
not be attacked by the peasant. When mailed 
knights went down before the longbow, and when 
later on the walls of castles could be battered by 
artillery, it was discovered that men are equal. The 
serf claimed to be free. 

The Black Prince took away from Wales the 
strongest and the most adventurous ; the Black 
Death came and took away the weakest and the most 
timid. The Death was the greater benefactor. A 
war, by taking away the strongest, degenerates the 
breed. It leaves a nation weaker, more impatient, in 
mental and physical decline. A plague, by taking 
away the weakest, improves the breed ; the population 
increases rapidly, and the nation is filled with new 
energy and hope. After the Black Death we seem to 
be in a new world — the poet sings of the plough, the 
descendant of princes becomes the champion of the 
villein — in the days of Owen Glendower. 



XIV 



THE RULE OF THE LORDS 



At the beginning of the fifteenth century there 
was much political and social unrest, and a great 
outburst of song in Wales. Political and social 
grievances were taking definite shape, the love song 
was passing away into the war song, gaining strength 
while the grace of the beauty of it perished. • 

The royal official, the march lord, the Welsh chief, 
the freeman, the enfranchised stranger, the serf — 
they all remained, all complained of their lot, and 
all were very busy. Great changes had come over 
the social system since the conquest, the new feudal 
institutions and the old tribal ones were mingled 
together in picturesque confusion. Something like 
the English manor seemed to be developing both 
from the free tribe and from the district conquered 
by a lord. But no two districts were exactly alike. 
Sometimes the same lordship would be divided into 
two parts, one under Welsh law and the other 
under English. Sometimes a compromise would be 
gradually and unconsciously established between the 



250 THE RULE OF THE LORDS 

two systems : the Welsh chief, on the one hand, 
would claim to own the land of his tribe in a district 
under Welsh law ; English settlers, on the other, 
would base their privilege on ninth degree relationship 
within a district under English law. In the confusion 
of a period of transition there came the opportunity 
of the strong who could profit by the change, and 
the stubborn resistance of the weak, who clung to 
his ancient privileges. 

The serf was emerging into political importance. 
His servitude had been defined ; when he had paid 
his dues he was free. He could leave the land where 
his conqueror had placed him and where he had kept 
him in bondage from time immemorial. If he left the 
land he found that his wages had gone up enormously 
after the Black Death. If he remained on the land 
he got more for the produce. Holdings had been 
vacant after the Death, he had often made a change 
for the better. The sum for which his serfdom had 
been commuted was now but a trifle. But he had a 
long and a bitter struggle before him. The lord tried 
to force the labourer to work at the old wages ; he 
tried to alter the commutation money of the villein, 
that is, he tried to raise the rent or to drive the 
peasant from his land. When the new revolt came, 
the peasant — the descendant of the serf who had 
patiently tilled the soil — was in it. Cruelties were 
perpetrated after battles, the struggle of interests took 
all the chivalry out of the struggle between .races, 
the thought of Wales gradually became weaker, and 
the style of its literature was debased. 

The freeman also had his grievances. The chief in 



GREY OF RUTHIN 25 I 

many cases was becoming the owner of the land, Hke 
a mere EngHsh lord, and ceasing to be the proud 
representative of a privileged tribe. The lord 
mercilessly crushed the freedom of the tribesman, 
disregarding the sacred privileges of kin, and stealing 
the land under the pretence of administering law. 

In the Vale of Clwyd, the rapacious Reginald de 
Grey of Ruthin, in the prime of manhood, was 
engaged in two struggles. One was his famous law- 
suit with Sir Edward Hastings. On the death of 
John, son of the earl of Pembroke whom the 
Spaniards captured, in a tournament in 1389, the 
family honours of the earls of Pembroke were con- 
tested between Hastings and Grey. After years of 
ligitation Grey won, though one's sympathy remains 
with the obstinate, suffering Hastings. 

His other struggle was with the Welsh chiefs whose 
lands Grey was wresting from them. He spent the 
last year or two of the century in trying to quell the 
rising discontent. He wrote to the king about " the 
riot," begging for a plainer commission to deal with 
agitators and to coerce officials who sympathised with 
the peasants, not only in his own lands, but in those 
of Arundel, Powys, and Mortimer also. On the day 
that he received the king's letter, he received another 
letter from one of the men who caused the trouble. 
Griffith ap Davydd ap Griffith took an interest in 
politics and in poetry, sold his services in time of war 
and redistributed property in Wales in times of peace. 
Grey calls him, in the summer of 1400, the strongest 
thief in Wales ; Griffith describes himself as one who 
at that time had nothing particular to do, but he was 



252 THE RULE OF THE LORDS 

ready to take what God would ordain for him. At 
the end of his long letter, he tells him who adminis- 
tered justice — 

" And hit was told me that ye ben in purpos for to make your men 
bran and sle in quadesover cuntre that I be and am sesened in. 
Withouten doute, as mony men that ye slen, and as many housen that 
ye bran, for my sake, as mony wol I brun and sle for your sake. And, 
doute not, I wolle have both bredde and ale of the best that is in your 
lordschip. I can no more ; but Gode keep your worschipfull astate in 
prosperite. " 

The march lord's answer ends in rhyme — 

*' But we hope we shall do thee a pryve thyng, — 
A roope, a ladder, and a ring, 
Heigh on gallowes for to henge, 

And thus shall be your endyng ; 
And he that made thee be there to helpyng, 
And we on our behalfe shall be well willyng. 
For thy lettre is knowlechyng." 

On the other side of the Vale of Clwyd, Grey had 
a quarrel with a Welsh squire. They had a dispute 
about a mountain district. The Welshman suspected 
Grey of plotting his ruin. He found himself sum- 
moned through Grey to the Scotch war when it was 
too late for him to respond ; and then found himself 
denounced as a traitor. Little did Lord Grey de 
Ruthin think that, within a very few years, his 
tenants would be collecting bad money, and the king 
contributing good money, to ransom him from the 
wronged squire's prison. 

In the valley of the Dee, the Fitzalans, earls of 
Arundel, had obtained possession of the lands that 
had once been in the grasp of Roger Mortimer of 



ARUNDEL AND CHARLTON 253 

Chirk. The first earl of Arundel had fought for the 
king against Rees ap Meredith, and for his own lands 
against Madoc. The second earl, Edmund, had left 
the barons and joined the Despensers, and among 
his rewards had been the most fertile districts of 
Upper Powys. The feud between him and his old 
allies was embittered by his acquiescence in the death 
of Lancaster after Boroughbridge, and by his rivalry 
with Charhon of Pcwys, part of whose spoil he had 
received. Charlton captured him, and led him to 
Isabella at Hereford, who had him executed. His 
son Richard, third earl of Arundel, made his peace 
with Edward HI. He obtained all the estates of his 
father, on condition of forgiving the blood feud with 
the Charltons. He served Edward HI. all through 
the French wars, and his marriage with Eleanor, 
daughter of Henry of Lancaster, completed the 
reconciliation. His son Richard, fourth earl, is one 
of the most prominent leaders during the strange 
and stormy times of the end of the fourteenth 
century. When he was beheaded as a traitor in 
1397, he left a determined avenger of his blood in 
his son Thomas Fitzalan. His two sons-in-law were 
of great political importance on the borders — William 
of Abergavenny and John Charlton of Powys. 

Edward Charlton, the last lord Charlton of Powys, 
heir to the traditions of the poet-prince Owen 
Cyveiliog, succeeded his brother John. He was a 
tyrannical lord in the valley of the Severn and in the 
valley of the Usk, and looked with dismay and terror 
at the peasant rising around Welshpool and around 
Caerleon. 



254 THE RULE OF THE LORDS 

South of Arundel and Charlton, the heir of the 
conqueror and the heir of the conquered, stood the 
Mortimers, now heirs to the crown of England and to 
the coronet of Wales. Roger, the third earl of March, 
had married Philippa Clarence, grand-daughter of 
Edward III., and his children stood next to the 
Crown after the son of the Black Prince. His son 
Roger, able and licentious as any of them, had been 
hacked to pieces by the Irish in 1398 ; and had 
left four children — Edmund and Roger, Anne and 
Eleanor. Edmund was but seven years old when 
his father died ; but his interests were jealously 
watched by his uncle Edmund. The great mass of 
the Mortimer tenants were Welsh ; the old national 
love of independence was renewed by the growing 
social grievances. Hotspur had married Eleanor 
Mortimer, young Edmund's aunt. As custodian of 
the castles around Snowdon, it was his work to pre- 
vent a Welsh revolt. Another great family had 
become merged in the Mortimers, The Clares of 
Gloucester were represented in 1360 by an heiress 
who married Lionel of Clarence, son of Edward III. 
Clarence's daughter Philippa carried to the Mortimers 
the succession to the traditions of the Clares and a 
possibility of a succession to the crown of England. 

Two great march families were becoming extinct. 
Grey and Hastings were wrangling over the succes- 
sion to the earldom of Pembroke. The Bohuns were 
represented by an heiress, Mary. Their Hereford 
title was revived in 1397 for her husband, Henry 
Bolingbroke, who became duke of Hereford. On the 
death of his father, John of Gaunt, Henry claimed 



RED DRAGON AND LEEK 255 

the earldom of Lancaster, and Richard's refusal 
brought a claim for the crown that Richard wore. 

It was these barons that were to fight, at the 
beginning of the fifteenth century, first against the king 
of England, and then against the awakened rebellious 
peasants of Wales. The Welsh peasants, free and 
bond, had learnt to look for protection against the 
march lords to the strong arm of the king. Gradually 
their ingrained loyalty was transferred to the king. 
The campaigns of the reign of Edward III., especially 
the victory of Cressy, had appealed greatly to the 
imagination of Wales. The national emblem — the 
red dragon — is closely associated with the battle of 
Cressy, as the leek is associated by tradition with the 
later victories of Henry V. The dragon has a place 
in Welsh legend, it is true, from time immemorial. 
The two dragons fight in the tale of Lludd a Llevelys, 
a collection of weird reminiscences of early heathen- 
dom. But it was probably the dragon on the standard 
of England, unfurled on the eve of the battle of 
Cressy, that became the favourite badge of Wales, 
lolo of the Red Gown, who was to sing the stirring 
war songs of Owen Glendower later on, tuned his 
early lyre to celebrate the praises of Edward III., and 
to appeal to him to lead a new and a great crusade 
to the east. 

The popularity of the Black Prince in Wales was 
inherited by his unfortunate son Richard II. He was 
created prince of Wales in 1376, the year of his 
father's death ; and on the following Christmas-day, 
the king ordered his little grandson, who was eleven 
years of age, to sit at the king's table above his uncles 



THE REIGN OF RICHARD II. 257 

John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and Edmund 
Langley, duke of York. When Edward III. died in 
the next year, the boy prince became a boy king, to 
rule over a turbulent nobility and a peasantry on the 
eve of rebellion. 

During his twenty years' struggle with the barons, 
Richard dallied with the newly awakened peasantry 
in England and with the commercial classes — the 
first poor law and the first navigation act belong to 
his reign — and probably aimed at establishing a 
popular absolutism. Among his opponents were 
Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and Bolingbroke, duke 
of Hereford ; and the final struggle took place in 
Wales. 

Arundel opposed Richard II. consistently, and the 
political quarrel was embittered by strong personal 
hatred. During Richard's momentary triumph in 
1397 he was brought to trial as a traitor, and 
executed. His son Thomas was placed in captivity, 
and every indignity that could wound his pride was 
heaped upon him. He escaped to the continent, and 
soon found himself the companion of another exile, 
the duke of Hereford. 

Henry Bolingbroke, duke of Hereford, was banished 
by Richard. On the death of John of Gaunt, Henry's 
father, Richard refused to allow his cousin to take 
possession of the Lancaster lands. In February, 
1399, Richard was urged to cross over from Ireland 
into Wales at once, for Bolingbroke and Arundel had 
landed at Ravenspur. Richard landed at Milford, 
Henry was making for Bristol. Richard determined 
to march rapidly to the northern part of his princi- 

18 



258 THE RULE OF THE LORDS 

pality and to his earldom of Chester. He hurried 
northwards through Carmarthen, and reached Conway 
with a {^\N followers. While Henry was advancing 
rapidly by way of Hereford and Shrewsbury, through 
the Mortimer and Arundel country, Richard wandered 
aimlessly, like a hunted hare, among the North Wales 
castles. He doubled back to Conway, and in August 
he met Henry at Flint. He was taken to England a 
prisoner, to share the fate of Edward H. ; and Henry 
Bolingbroke became king as Henry IV. 

What Wales wanted was a king strong enough to 
protect the peasant and the merchant, now rapidly 
becoming prosperous, against the tyranny and the 
unlaw of the great nobles. The new king's chief 
difficulties were in Wales. The castles were exceed- 
ingly costly ; and soon the king had not even a 
hundred pounds that he could send to pay for 
manning and victualling them. The nobles began 
to revolt, and it was Hotspur, the custodian of the 
North Wales castles, that rose first. Mortimer and 
Arundel and Charlton of Powys were helpless, how- 
ever, because of their dread of a Welsh rising. 
Mortimer joined the Welsh, Arundel became as 
poor as the king by opposing them. 

The prosperity which preceded Glendower's revolt 
is seen by the activity of the towns. Charters had 
been given to many immediately after the Conquest, 
to encourage their growth ; charters are now obtained 
in order to protect the privileges of prosperous citizens, 
by allowing them to form themselves into a gild 
which had a monopoly of all trade within the town. 



PROSPERITY OF THE TOWNS 259 

In 1340 Hugh le Despenser granted a charter to 
Cardiff which allowed its merchants to form an asso- 
ciation for exclusive trading. " We have granted 
unto our same burgesses that they and their heirs 
may make a gild among themselves, at what time 
and whenever they will, for their own profit." While 
granting the burgesses their ancient rights of cutting 
whin and digging turf, their lord prevents them — 
mercers, drapers, curriers, fell-mongers, glovers, and 
others — from selling their goods in villages and travel- 
ling along by-paths, in order not to pay toll. During 
the great fair, which lasted for fifteen days, the lord 
promises to prevent merchants from buying or selling 
outside of the fair. Places so far removed as Denbigh 
and Cenfig, Hope and Neath, Nevin and Llantrisant, 
Newport and Pwllheli, obtained privileges of market 
for their well-to-do merchants. Carmarthen was an 
important staple town, through which the wool of the 
country had to pass on its way to the sea. Some 
towns read into their earlier charters a right to form a 
gild, in order to escape any new payment to the king 
for the concession, and Conway, Carmarthen, New- 
borough, Harlech, Criccieth, and Bala, had to defend 
themselves before the king's justices. Swansea had a 
monopoly of trade in Gower since 1305. 

While the merchants of the towns were extending 
and strengthening their monopoly, a reaction had 
begun to rise against their exclusive dealing. English 
and foreign merchants found the various districts 
monopolised by small unprogressive gilds of mer- 
chants. Edward HI. had enacted in 1335 that every 
town or market was to be free to all merchants to sell 



26o THE RULE OF THE LORDS 

what they liked and to whomever they hked. The 
towns in Wales had not only been the seats of mono- 
polist companies, they had been political garrisons as 
well. The new free-trade movement made it easier 
for Welshmen to enter the towns ; and, with the 
exception of a few places like Carnarvon and Beau- 
maris and Conway, there was an increasing Welsh 
population in the towns of Wales. The very castles 
were manned by Welshmen, and often commanded 
by them. Between Llywelyn and Glendower a great 
change had come over the country. The Wales that 
rose in rebellion with Owen Glendower was partly the 
mediaeval Wales of Llywelyn, but its disintegration 
revealed the political elements of the future in their 
crude infancy. 




XV 



BARD, FRIAR, LOLLARD 



The literary awakening of the second part of the 
fourteenth century brought with it a struggle between 
the bards and the friars. The bards represented, not 
only a rising national spirit, but a great reaction 
against the interference of the friars with private life. 
The two orders — the bards and the begging friars — 
wandered through Wales. Davydd ap Gwilym, the 
greatest of the bards, was welcomed in every town 
throughout Wales, from the hospitable homes of the 
chieftains of Anglesey to the court of Ivor Hael at 
Bassaleg in Gwent. But not a single instance of his 
perfect description of womanly beauty or of the 
beauty of nature found place in the collection of 
literature that monk and friar read. It was a struggle 
between the old condemnation of the world as sinful 
and the new delight in beauty — beauty of woman, of 
flower, of forest glade — which made Wales so joyous 
and so full of hope. 

The friars were degenerating, their zeal for morality 
was regarded as a hypocritical and antiquated device 



261 



262 BARD, FRIAR, LOLLARD 

for the justification of their power and privileges. A 
hundred years before they had been the salt of the 
earth, in Wales as elsewhere. Their high ideals, 
their self-sacrifice, their zeal for morality, their 
devotion to the cause of peace and justice, their 
championship of the weak, and their sympathy with 
suffering, had appealed to Llywelyn as much as to 
Simon de Montfort. From pleasant Llan Vaes, by 
the Menai, where Eleanor de Montfort slept, to the 
leper-haunted streets of Haverfordwest, the friar 
passed through Wales on his exalted mission. At 
the end of the fourteenth century the friar still 
wandered through Wales as before. But his ideals no 
longer appealed to the best minds of the country, the 
conscience of a nation condemned the morality which 
looked upon beauty as a disgrace and upon love as a 
crime ; the eloquence of the Dominican no longer 
carried conviction, the spell of the influence of the 
humane Franciscan had gone. " Three things," 
wrote a bitter satirist of women and priests and 
Englishmen in Coyty, " the less there is of them the 
better — the grunting of a sow on a windy day, the 
persistent coughing of a hag, and the sermon of a 
grey friar." " Three beings there are," wrote a poet ; 
"woe to him who gets under their talons — a grey 
friar, a usurer, and an upstart lord of land." 

The bard had taken the place of the friar as the 
exponent of the new period of thought. He longed 
for the ideals of the friar in the first blush of their 
sanctified beauty, and he humanised them. Mary, 
who had displaced Enid and Olwen, gave place in 
her turn to dark-eyed Dyddgu, or Morvudd with 



THE WORSHIP OF WOMAN 263 

hair like a shower of gold, or Llio, whose hair was 
like a flash of lightning against driven snow. The 
forest glade took the place of the monastery, the lark 
was now " the hermit chorister before God's throne." 
Love became true worship, better than a pilgrimage 
to Rome or Compostella. It was a sin, according to 
the poet's creed, to be a nun in spring ; the vestments 
of the true religion of the spring and the cuckoo were 
not the black robe and the veil, but the flowing green 
mantle and the wedding-ring. The forest glade is 
described as a glorious cathedral, where God is wor- 
shipped in beauty of holiness — an earthly holiness 
sanctified by the touch of the spiritual. 

The delight in the beauty of nature had the 
enthusiasm of a religion. The seagull, that lily of 
the sea, was " the nun that dwellest in the foam." 
The sea-swallow's wing, seen against the whiteness of 
the wave crest, was like the eyebrow of the poet's lady- 
love. The delight in colour — Davydd ap Gwilym's 
delight in the golden splendour of the broom on 
Cardigan hills, or Rees Goch's delight in the deep 
red of the primrose in the Vale of Glamorgan — is 
quite passionate. 

The delight in the sensuous beauty of colour, and 
the adoration of woman, were, perhaps, the natural 
development of the Franciscans' own teaching. The 
Franciscan had laid stress on the humanity of Christ, 
and had introduced the adoration of the Virgin. He 
had made Mary, the mother of the Lord, the heroine 
of the Welsh peasant for two hundred years. Her 
worship exalted and sanctified the Welshman's 
passion ; it remained as a delight in the beauty of 



264 BARD, FRIAR, LOLLARD 

woman when the last friar had passed away. Flowers 
no longer reminded him of the miraculous beauty of 
Enid, though the lily of the valley still bore her 
name ; and Olwen, under whose tread flowers had 
sprung up, retained but the bindv/eed and the clover. 
The flowers became the flowers of Mary. Hers were 
the centaury, the ashe-keys, the blue and scarlet 
pimpernel, the sweet gale, the lungwort, the common 
bugle. The cuckoo-flower was her mantle, the 
flowers of the purple digitalis were her gloves, the 
thrift was her cushion, the milk-thistle her comb, the 
calceolus her shoe, the great mullein her taper, the 
galingale her garland. The buttercup held her 
drops of sweat, and the cowslip her tears ; the dew- 
berry and the gooseberry were her berries, the heath 
shield fern and the sharp dock and the dwarf elder 
bore her name ; the common toad-flax was her flax, 
the spikenard was her medicine, the meadow-sweet 
her favourite flower. 

But the human passion, strong and tumultuous, 
which throbbed in the poet's lay, frightened the friar 
into a condemnation of his own teaching. The 
Dominican brought the chill touch of mediaeval 
theology into contact with the new life. The Fran- 
ciscan, though sympathising with the new thought, 
as well as with the political aspirations which were so 
closely connected with it, looked askance at the 
wandering minstrel. The monk of the thirteenth 
century had refused the greatest poet of the age a 
grave in Ystrad Marchell ; the monk of the fifteenth 
century refused the odes of the greatest poet of the 
age a place in the Red Book of Hergest. But the 



BARD AND FRIAR 265 

instinct of men refused to condemn naturalness and 
kindly humour ; and growing patriotism gave the 
poet a more telling eloquence even than that given 
by summer and love. 

The friar did not lose his supremacy without a 
struggle. He confessed that the bard thoroughly 
enjoyed himself in this world, yet would he not fare 
well in the next. " Alleviate, while it is time," he 
advised the bard, " the suffering in store for thee in 
the world to come. Cease thy love-singing, betake 
thee to thy prayers. It was not for a song that God 
ransomed the world. You entice men and women 
to a life of sin. Mortal praise is poorly earned by 
the loss of an immortal soul." 

" God is not so cruel," answered the bard, " as he 
is described on monastic sheepskins. He will never 
condemn a man for loving a maid. My vocation is 
as sacred as thine. I must wander singing, as thou 
must wander begging." 

They always leave each other in the same way — 
each certain of the other's final fate. The Dominican 
is to the poet a black crow wandering through 
Wales, making earth miserable by meditating on the 
peace of heaven. The poet describes in scathing 
satire the importunate tongue and the cold heart of 
the black friar who makes the path to heaven so 
narrow. He condemns with equal energy, though 
not with so much disdain, his more formidable rival 
for the favour of the people — the Franciscan who, 
like himself, had caught a glimpse of the beauty of 
this world and of the goodness that human nature 
still retained. The friar calls upon the maid to enter 



266 BARD, FRIAR, LOLLARD 

heaven through the nunnery, and to beware of the 
alluring love of the bard. The bard summons her to 
the true worship of God in the glorious cathedral that 
He Himself has made, with its green steeple of leaves, 
and its floor of golden trefoils — 

" Maid of dark and glossy tresses, 
Humbly I request, 
In Dol Aeron's green recesses 
Thee to be my guest." 

The anchorite who translated the Elucidarium into 
melodious Welsh, at Llanddewi Brevi in the middle 
of the fourteenth century, applies to the Welsh bards 
the mediaeval condemnation of the jongleurs. " W^ith 
all their might they serve the devil ; for of them it is 
said : ' They know not God ; the Lord shall have 
them in derision.' They who deride will be derided." 
The translator of this popular summary of mediaeval 
theology has doubts about the future of some, but 
none about that of the bards. " What hope is there 
for the merchants ? " he asks. The answer is : " There 
is but little." " What hope is there for the bards ? " 
" There is none." 

The rebellion so sternly condemned was the revolt 
of the human heart against the unreal and chilling 
life of the cloister. The poet breathed the living 
breath of his own beloved month of May to the 
winter of mediaeval thought. But the final struggle 
between bard and friar was prevented by the out- 
break of the war in Wales. Monastery and friary 
were to suffer from the merciless sword of an orthodox 
persecuting king ; the bards were to have an Act of 



BARD AND LOLLARD 267 

Parliament directed against them. The grey friar of 
Cardiff and the Cistercian monk of Strata Florida, 
as well as the bards of the Vale of Clwyd and of 
Glamorgan, welcomed Owen Glendower. It is worth 
noticing that the last defender of the friars was the 
Welshman Pecock, and that the last great Welsh 
mediaeval poet was a Franciscan friar. 

On the Welsh borders another protest, of a very 
different kind, was heard. In 1391 Walter Brute, 
one of the followers of Wyclif, pleaded for the simpler 
creed and purer religion of the future. For the 
authority of a degenerate church he wished to sub- 
stitute the authority of the Bible, its true meaning 
revealed by God to each individual soul. Instead of 
the authority of the Pope, who had betrayed Wales 
so often in the interests of policy, in disregard of 
justice, the authority of Christ alone was to be recog- 
nised. The tawdry splendour of the ceremonies of 
the Mass was to give place to perfect simplicity ; the 
mind was not to be distracted by earthly grandeur ; 
it was to be self-concentrated in intense effort to 
realise the spiritual presence of Christ in the bread 
and the wine. 

Brute's theology is at the same time clearer and more 
mystical than that of Wyclif. In it the great doctrine 
of justification by faith, that most revolutionary doc- 
trine which makes all men equal before God, stands 
out clearly. To the Welsh mind religion must be 
either a sensuous delight in beauty and melody or an 
intense yearning for the severe beauty of the purely 
spiritual. Davydd ap Gwilym and Walter Brute, the 



268 BARD, FRIAR, LOLLARD 

Cardiganshire poet and the Lollard of the march, 
placed the two ideals before fifteenth-century Welsh- 
men. The poet idealises and humanises the religion 
of the Middle Ages, all the details of the complexity 
of its ceremonies, and describes the forest glade as 
the mighty cathedral of the worship of earthly love. 
The Lollard sternly condemns the sensuous worship 
of the poet, and calls his countrymen to the joy which 
justification from sin gave, and to the purely spiritual 
atmosphere in which Christ held communion with men. 
This duality, seemingly so inconsistent, has never 
ceased to exist in Wales ; it is the blending of the 
two elements that explains one half of its history 
and the whole of its literature. 

Bard and friar and Lollard, however, had one strong 
bond of union in their common patriotism. The 
Franciscan friars are soon to suffer for their support 
of Glendower ; their priory of Llan Vaes, where slept 
Eleanor de Montfort, the last Lady of Snowdon, was 
pillaged and burnt. The poets left their love-songs, 
and sang of war and heroes again, as soon as they 
saw Glendower's star. Brute had tried to give even 
the religious revival a national aspect. The gospel 
had come to Wales, not in degenerate old age from 
Rome, but pure and young from its cradle in the East. 
" And thus it seemeth to me the Britons, amongst 
other nations, have been, as it were, by the special 
election of God, called and converted to the faith." 



XVI 



OWEN GLENDOWER 



The economic discontent, the hesitation of the 
Mortimers, the divisions in England, and the Hterary 
awakening in Wales, account for the appearance, as 
if by magic, of a prince of Wales exercising wider 
sway and wielding greater power even than Llywelyn 
the Great 

Owen Glendower was a scion of the old princes of 
Powys, and the new struggle for independence had 
its strength in the Berwyn as the old had had its 
strength in Snowdon. The home of Owen's child- 
hood is that picturesque " glen of the sacred water " 
— Glyndyvrdwy — where the Dee passes through a 
deep woody ravine from Edeyrnion to the plain of 
Maelor. High above it, at the present day, the ruins 
of Dinas Bran look like a broken iron crown on the 
top of a conical hill ; and the Cistercian monastery 
of Valle Crucis, a beautiful ruin, lies a little lower 
down the valley. In Dinas Bran had dwelt the 
descendants of Owen Cyveiliog, who ruled over 

northern Powys. After the conquest the country had 

269 



270 



OWEN GLENDOWER 



passed to the Mortimers, then to Arundel. Owen 
was one of the chiefs who were protected against the 
new lords by the devotion of their tribesmen. Beyond 
the Berwyn he had another home, looking towards 
distant England ; and he had kinsmen and allies in 
many other parts of the country. 

Owen had studied law at Westminster, had followed 




VALLE CRUCIS. 

{From a drawing by Captain Batfy.) 



Arundel to the Scotch wars, and had been squire to 
Henry of Lancaster before he became king. About 
1400 Lord Grey probably feared his power, certainly 
coveted some of his land. Owen, by fighting in his 
own private quarrel, suddenly became the leader of a 
widespread revolt which, in the intensity of its brief 
duration, terrified all in authority at the time, and 



A SUDDEN ACTIVITY 2/1 

left a more permanent impression on the legends of 
Wales than any other political or social movement. 

The burning of Lord Grey's Ruthin was the signal. 
The chamberlain of Carnarvon saw the people selling 
their cattle in order to buy horses and war equip- 
ments. " Some of hem stelleth horse," he wrote to 
the king, " and some of hem robbeth hors, and 
purveyen hem of sadles, bowes, arrowes, and other 
harnys.'* Welsh labourers crovyded home from Eng- 
land. Welsh mercenaries were coming home from 
France, and from the distant East. Welsh students 
hurried home from Oxford — Howel Gethin, bachelor- 
at-law ; Master Morris Stove, of the College of 
Exeter ; levan Clochydd, scholar ; John Lloyd, 
dwelhng in Cat Street ; and Master David Leget 
Brith — he of the eyes of many colours. The bards 
welcomed the new leader ; old lolo of the Red Mantle, 
a chief of Dyffryn Clwyd, who had sung the glories 
of Cressy in immature verse, now welcomed the 
new leader in strains of perfect versification, full of 
enthusiasm which makes them real poetry some- 
times — 

" Many a time have I desired 
To see a lord of our own kin." 

One of the rapid marches which characterise the 
first part of Henry the Fourth's reign brought him to 
Snowdon in the late autumn of 1400, before Owen 
had organised the revolt. He punished the 
Franciscan monks of Llan Vaes, in Anglesey, 
devastating their home with fire and sword. 
Apparently there was no excuse for the severity. 
The revolt had disappeared as if by magic, Owen was 



2/2 OWEN GLENDOWER 

nowhere to be seen, and winter was coming. The 
king hesitated whether he would pardon all except 
Owen and his nephews, thinking all was over ; Wales 
was in a state of tension of mind, wondering where 
Owen would appear next. 

On the morrow of Good Friday, 1401, the news 
was spread that Owen's nephews, Gwilym and Rees, 
had surprised and taken Conway. The castle walls 
were climbed by Gwilym and Howel Vychan and 
forty daring men while the garrison were in the town 
church. It was soon retaken, however, by Hotspur 
and Prince Henry. On the spot, they were alive to 
the danger of an extended revolt, and they allowed 
the brothers to leave their prize in peace. Henry, at 
a distance, said that the peace did them no honour. 
Percy went on to Carnarvon, where the men of 
Merioneth and Carnarvon came to cower before him 
and to thank the king for his gracious pardon. 

But the capture of Conway had broken the spell of 
the terror of the new castles, and the unrest spread 
rapidly to the borders and to South Wales. While 
impulsive, hasty Percy, with Arundel, passed into 
Owen's own country, and won a victory under Cader 
Idris, Owen himself had appeared south of the Dovey, 
and there was no part of Wales in which he was not 
expected as a deliverer by an imaginative people in 
those days of comets, battles in the air, and appear- 
ances in many visible shapes of the Evil One himself. 
In spite of the appearance of the king on the borders, 
and of the attempts of Charlton and Arundel, and 
the Mortimers, to check Owen's advance, his supre- 
macy was continually extending — and revolts of 




•Svc/'^^^ 






,40* 






r/dgnor!h 




•ceste) 



p^G/oucestei' 



WALES. 

Ai /he time ofOu/eii 6/endoLuer 



TO 



274 OWEN GLENDOWER 

peasants, who burnt their lords' houses and shot their 
bailiffs under the very gallows, continually invited 
him further on. Lampeter was burnt in one direc- 
tion, Welshpool was attacked in another, and it was 
reported that Owen had vowed to exterminate the 
English tongue. 

In autumn the king came to Snowdon, passed 
southwards through Merioneth, and cruelly ravaged 
Cardiganshire. He made Strata Florida, the burial- 
place of the princes of the South, his headquarters. 
In the year that he had passed the statute De Heretico 
Comburendo as the champion of orthodoxy, he stabled 
his horses in Strata Florida, close to the high altar. 
Griffith Vaughan, of Caio, at whose table the red 
wine used to flow, was hanged and drawn and 
quartered for avowing his belief in Owen Glendower. 
The children of Cardiganshire, a thousand of them, 
were gathered together before the king at Strata 
Florida, to be carried into captivity. As Henry was 
devastating Cardiganshire Owen appeared, hung on 
the flank of his army, inflicted heavy losses on him, 
and captured the arms and horses and tents of the 
prince of Wales, which he carried to the fastnesses of 
Snowdon for his own behoof 

The energy of the king is reflected by the statutes 
passed in the English Parliament. No thorough 
Welsh were to purchase land in the border towns — 
Chester, Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Ludlow, Leominster, 
Hereford, Gloucester, or Worcester. Any one who 
took a Welsh tenant was made responsible for him, 
and Welsh refugees from England were to be sum- 
marily dealt with by the march lords. For three years 



AN EXPECTANT COUNTRY 2/5 

after the riot no Englishman was to be convicted in 
Wales, when accused by a Welshman, except by an 
English judge and an English jury. The pardon 
granted at the end of 1400 shows that the revolt had 
begun in the whole of North Wales and Shropshire. 
Lord Grey's advice was taken when it was too late. 
The castles were put in thorough repair, Welshmen 
were excluded from all the higher offices, the districts 
were made responsible for breaches of the peace, and 
the gatherings of bards were forbidden. 

But difficulties were rising. The people and the 
clergy paid the costs of the war " with loud murmur- 
ing and inward cursing." The castles of the Snowdon 
districts, though greatly undermanned, were a drain 
upon the king's revenue that he could no longer meet. 
Hotspur had gone home, meditating treason. Some 
believed that Richard II. was not dead, all knew that 
the young earl of March was alive. 

It is true that Owen Glendower had not done much 
in the winter of 1401 ; yet the very successes of his 
enemies but revealed his growing power. He had to 
retreat from the siege of Carnarvon with his standard, 
the golden dragon on white ground. Harlech was 
saved by the forced march of a small army of archers 
and men-at-arms from Chester. He had failed to 
win the support of the two bishops. But, through the 
length and breadth of the land, the smouldering fire of 
rebellion was ready to burst into a blaze. 

With the year 1402 Owen appears in his true 
character. The guerilla leader of rebellion has 
become an organiser and a statesman. He tries to 
win over the English barons, he plans alliances with 



2/6 OWEN GLEN DOWER 

the lords of Ireland and the kings of Scotland and 
France, he enters into negotiations with the English 
council. But his military activity did not cease. At 
the battle of the Vyrnwy Lord Grey was taken 
prisoner, and Adam of Usk heard at Rome that two 
thousand men had fallen. In summer Rees Gethin 
and a small army met the levies of the border 
counties at Bryn Glas. The Welsh borderers turned 
their arrows against their own army ; and the English 
army, which had hurried on for fear that the Welsh- 
men would not give battle, broke into disastrous 
flight. The atrocities were like those committed after 
Evesham, and it shows that a class fought under 
Owen that had never fought under the Llywelyns. 

The battle of Bryn Glas was very important in 
two ways. It showed that the Welsh would fight a 
pitched battle when necessary, it placed Edmund 
Mortimer in Owen's hands. The Mortimer lands 
had been spared, Edmund himself was treated with 
every consideration. Would he join Glendower 
against Henry, and claim the throne for his nephew, 
the rightful heir ? 

The king led an expedition into Whales, in three 
divisions, along the three ordinary paths. But it led 
to nothing. " For diversity of rain and cold and 
snow, his host was nigh lost. In the vigil of the 
Nativity of our Lady, the king had pitched his tent 
in a fair plain. There blew suddenly so much wind, 
and so impetuous, with a great rain, that the king's 
tent was felled, and a spear cast so violently that, had 
the king not been armed, he had been dead of the 
stroke. There were many who supposed that this 



A PANIC AMONG OFFICIALS 2JJ 

was done by necromancy, and by compelling of 
spirits." 

Magic or no magic, Owen's power grew. Lord 
Grey ransomed himself at a great price. Edmund 
Mortimer married Glendower's daughter ; and when 
he came to the borders again, it was to tell his joyful 
tenants that he was in alliance with Glendower, who 
would restore King Richard to the throne of England ; 
and, if Richard was dead, " my honoured nephew," 
the earl of March. 

At the beginning of the year 1403 Prince Henry 
ravaged Owen's country — burnt Sycharth, the home 
on the slope of the Berwyn, whose magnificence had 
been described in one of lolo's odes — and then 
penetrated through Glyndyvrdwy to Edeyrnion, 
which he described as " a fair and populous country," 
before he ravaged it. 

In the summer Owen's march through South Wales 
was more like a triumphal progress than a conqueror's 
march. At the beginning of July he was at 
Llandovery ; on the march to Carmarthen he 
received the allegiance of the whole country between 
the Towy and the sea, except the castles. While he 
was besieging Carmarthen, the frantic despair of the 
neighbouring castellans is shown in their letters 
clamouring for assistance. Jenkin Havard writes 
" in haste and in dread " from Dynevor, asking per- 
mission to steal away by night to Brecon. John 
Scuddamore writes from Carreg Cenen, reproaching 
the authors of the policy which gave offices to Welsh- 
men and allowed them to Celticise the towns. The 
dean of Hereford writes in " great, great haste," that 



2/8 OWEN GLEN DOWER 

the whole country will be lost unless the king 
marches night and day to save it ; he reminds the 
king of the dishonour of losing the country his 
ancestors had won, and adds : " P.S. — Carmarthen 
burnt." 

After the fall of Carmarthen Owen went westwards 
to St. Clears and Laugharne, but a detachment of 
his army was defeated by the lord of Carew. In 
Morgannwg and Gwent the reception of the prince 
who appeared to his friends in sunshine, and to his 
enemies in storms of wind and rain and snow, was as 
enthusiastic as it had been in the Vale of Towy. 

Rapid as his progress was, he did not arrive in time 
to join the Percies, whose army was routed at the battle 
of Shrewsbury by the king. But it was easier for 
Henry to make a forced march and win a brilliant 
victory than to face the enduring difficulties caused 
by an empty exchequer, by the growing discontent 
of the nobles, and by the silent but determined social 
struggle which was going on between lord and serf 

In 1404 Owen was left to rule Wales without 
interference from England. He besieged Carnarvon 
in January, with the aid of French and Breton allies, 
with " engines and saws and ladders." A woman 
made her way through the snow to tell them at 
Chester what desperate straits the heroic little 
garrison was in ; and a spy, a little man called 
Howel Vychan, said that the garrison at Harlech 
would soon yield the castle. Cardiff was captured ; 
but in the devastation the Franciscans lost nothing 
except their books and chalices, which they had sent 
to the castle for safety. 



A WELSH PARLIAMENl 2/9 

In the spring^ and summer Owen summoned a 
Welsh parHament to Dolgellau and Machynlleth, and 
described himself as " Owen, by the grace of God 
prince of Wales." By the end of 1404 he was at the 
height of his power. With the exception of a few 
castles like Coyty, he ruled, directly or through 
subject barons, over nearly the whole country west of 
the Severn. He had appointed Llywelyn Bifort 
bishop of Bangor ; and John Trevor, bishop of St. 
Asaph, turned aside from the king " like a deceitful 
bow," and joined Glendower. 

Owen was to get a fleet of Spanish pirates, and 
engines of war from France — his great difficulties 
being the English fleet and the Welsh castles. His 
envoys were received by the king of France as those 
of a sovereign king, his support was welcomed by the 
Avignon pope Benedict XHI. — the Peter de Luna 
whose career and end were so like those of Owen 
himself At the beginning of 1405, the treaty of 
alliance with France was signed by Owen, at 
Aberystwyth, and a plot was being hatched to bring 
the young earl of March to him, to be placed on the 
throne of England. The ally of France and of the 
Papacy, with his own nominee as king of England, 
he would have leisure to realise his dream of an 
independent Wales, with a reformed church and a 
revival of learning. 

Four years it took "our dread and illustrious 
prince " to become the reigning prince of Wales. 
Four years more, and his power was disappearing as 
rapidly as it rose. 

Social discontent may smoulder for centuries, gene- 




mMm,^tm. •': :*^mm-m 



RESULTS OF A PEASANT REVOLT 28 1 

rations of peasants can win great triumphs by a passive 
hereditary resistance. But the flame of a peasant 
revolt is very short-hved. Still the Welsh revolt 
did not really fail. It had inspired the official rulers 
with a w^holesome dread, and they dared not interfere 
so openly with customs sanctioned by customary 
Welsh law. Prosperity came, and the people who 
had risen in revolt against oppression, when their 
own daily life was interfered with, had no desire to 
fight in order to know whether Owen or Henry was 
the true prince of Wales. If birds sang once, and 
freemen rose, at the command of innate royalty — 
they would not do so now. In 1405, Prince Henry 
won a victory at Mynydd Pwll Melyn, in Gwent ; but 
the storms which drove the king back from 
Glamorgan were supposed to have a connection with 
Glendower's magic. In spite of a hard winter which 
killed all the birds, and in spite of the difficulties in 
England, in 1406 and 1407, the lords marchers were 
able to regain lost ground. The struggle became 
less and less pronounced, everything settled down 
quietly, until neither Wales nor Glendower had a 
history. But the fact that Wales was still a safe 
home for Glendower shows that the rulers of the 
country had adopted a more conciliatory polic}^, and 
that the gratitude of the peasant to his benefactor 
was still a protection. 

Owen Glendower's claims to greatness are not those 
of a successful or unsuccessful rebel. The revolt 
would have taken place in any case. The power of 
the king would have been broken by the nobles even 
if he had not wasted his energy and resources on the 



282 OWEN GLENDOWER 

crushing of Wales. One daring raid was enough to 
spread rebelHon from the Dee to the Wye. What 
shows Owen's greatness was his attempt to create 
out of the disorder — with its endless conflicts of 
interests, with its chaotic law, with its angry passions, 
with its selfish aims — a nation with settled institutions 
and high ideals. We get a few glimpses of his 
political ideals before the wars of sordid interests 
come again. 

In a letter sent to Charles of France in 1406, dated 
at Pennal, Owen Glendower states clearly what he 
was aiming at. First of all, he aimed at restoring 
the independence of Wales. Secondly, he aimed at 
restoring the independence of the Welsh Church. 
Thirdly, he wished to establish two universities in 
Wales, one in the North and one in the South. 

The new independent Wales was to be ruled by 
a prince and a parliament. The parliament was 
summoned, apparently, at different times, to Dol- 
gellau, Harlech, and Machynlleth. Like the older 
princes, from Maelgwn to Llywelyn, Owen Glendower 
looked upon the banks of the Dovey as the most 
central part of Wales. But the parliament which 
met at Machynlleth was very unlike the council that 
had gathered round Llywelyn the Great two centuries 
before. Instead of princes, summoned on account of 
their blood, four men were summoned from each 
commote in Wales under Owen's authority. It was, 
of course, an imitation of the English parliament ; but 
its life was too short, though the matters submitted 
to it were of the greatest importance, to have any 
history. 



GLEN dower's IDEALS 283 

In one point Owen's parliament was like Llywelyn's 
council — its existence and usefulness depended en- 
tirely on the personal influence of the prince. Any 
one might have risen in revolt ; it was Owen alone 
who could lead in peace. Tradition speaks of an 
attempt on his life while his parliament was at 
Dolgellau. On the mountain side above the Wnion, 
Howel Sele turned his bow suddenly towards him 
and tried to pierce him with an arrow. Owen slew 
the traitor, and hid his body in the hollow of a great 
oak-tree, which was well known as the "demon's 
oak " until it fell, almost within living memory. At 
Machynlleth, Sir David Gam made an attempt on 
Owen's life. He was imprisoned, though the king 
was very anxious to ransom him. The attempts, and 
the deep impression they made on the minds of the 
next generations, show how great the importance of 
the personality of Owen was. 

The revival of the independence of the Welsh 
Church was the old dream of Giraldus; but, though 
Llywelyn the Great had sympathised with the move- 
ment, no Welsh prince before Owen had thought of 
associating the Church with the State in Wales as it 
was associated in England. The fabulous metro- 
politanship of St. David's had become universally 
believed in. Gerald's struggle for its independence 
had given it pre-eminence in the popular mind. Its 
bishop protested against the claims of fussy, pushing 
Peckham to rule over the Welsh Church as arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. lolo devotes his best ode to 
its saint, its sanctity, and calm retreat. It had be- 
come the favourite resort of pilgrims. What Snowdon 



284 OWEN GLEN DOWER 

was to the political independence of Wales, St. David's 
was to the independence of its Church. Owen Glen- 
dower had seen the effects of the gradual conquest 
of Wales on the Church as a modern historian de- 
scribes them — " The fearful abuse of spiritual powers 
and the exceeding worldliness of the Church, and 
especially in the monstrous wickedness with which 
excommunications and interdicts were scattered about 
at random ; the commencement of the bane of the 
Welsh Church, the imposing upon it of a clergy that 
could not speak Welsh, and the treating its sees as 
mere pieces of preferment/' The burning of Bangor 
and St. Asaph shows what Owen thought of the 
Church of his time ; the independent Church of the 
future was to recall the memories of the Franciscan 
movement and to be more closely associated with 
learning. 

The creation of Welsh universities was no visionary 
project. During Glendower's life more than a dozen 
universities were founded in Europe between Pesth 
and St. Andrews. Owen himself was well versed in 
the historical lore of the time ; in his letters to Irish- 
men and Scotchmen the visions of the student of 
antiquity are in strange contrast to the definite plans 
of the practical statesman. The universities appealed 
to many of the supporters of Owen. He was the 
hero of the Welsh student. Strata Florida, the 
greatest and most influential of Welsh abbeys, sup- 
ported him. The grey friars, as well as the bards, 
were his strong partisans. The university remained 
a mere dream, as it did for five centuries afterwards. 
The Church was not reformed or nationalised. Owen's 



glendower's personality 285 

bishops fell on evil times. John Trevor, who had 
pronounced sentence of deprivation on Richard IL, 
and who had been sent by Owen to Scotland to find 
out whether the rumours that he was still alive were 
true, died in exile at Paris. Llywelyn Bifort was 
taken prisoner in the last desperate battle of the 
Percies, but his life was spared because he carried no 
arms. He also died an exile, and the last glimpse 
we get of him is in the Council of Constance, still 
calling himself bishop of Bangor. 

All his political ideals departed with Owen, except 
a vague kind of nationality, which was partly a re- 
miniscence of the struggle against oppression, partly 
a reverence for the memory of its hero. It is not 
known when Owen died ; it is not known where he 
is buried ; in death, as in life, mystery has enshrouded 
him. Sycharth is now a farmhouse ; of Glyndyvrdwy 
there is not a stone left. Owen himself lies probably 
at Corwen hard by, though there is a tradition that 
he found a grave at Monnington. None of his sons 
or daughters are prominent in later history. 

Edmund Mortimer, Owen's most important ally, 
died at Harlech, where he was besieged. His wife, 
Glendower's daughter, and his children, died in 
captivity in London. His nephew, young Edmund 
Mortimer, died of the plague ; his niece, Anne 
Mortimer, bequeathed to the house of York the 
power and the hatred which eventually destroyed the 
Lancastrians. 

It is as difficult to get a definite idea of Owen's 
character from the bards who saw him and sat at 
his table, as it is from the English chroniclers who 



286 OWEN GLENDOWER 

associate him with storms and magic. It is easy to 
make a list of details — he was the people's golden 
sword, his gifts were coats of mail, he well understood 
the intricacies of alliterative song, stern was he to- 
wards those of alien tongue, but the defender of the 
oppressed men of South Wales. lolo describes him 
while longing for his appearance to deliver Wales — 
for his tall form, for the three lions azure on his 
golden shield. But the personality of Owen remains 
far off and mysterious. His sons fought and fell in 
battle — he was at few battles, if at any. We see him 
in council, tall and majestic, but even there he is the 
personification of political dreams rather than a real 
man. It may be that he tried to surround himself 
with mystery ; every disappearance as well as every 
appearance increased his influence. Had he the 
superstition which is the shadow of fatalism ? He 
consulted a seer when at " Merlin's city, now called 
Carmarthen," and was told that he would be taken 
under a black flag. A soldier who helped to defend 
Calais, and who wrote a history of Wales in the 
turmoil of a busy soldier's life over a century later, 
came from the fringe of Owen's country. He gives 
the facts of Owen's life as they had been warped and 
confused by popular tradition, and the various popular 
beliefs about the causes of his disappearance — that 
he could not pay his mercenaries, that he really died, 
that he had lost faith in his mission. One early 
morning the abbot of Valle Crucis was walking along 
the hillside above the abbey, and praying. Owen 
Glendower appeared and said — 

" Sir abbot, you have risen too early." 



THE FINAL VERDICT 28/ 

' No," answered the abbot ; " it is you who have 
risen too early — by a hundred years." 

And Glendower knew that he was not the Owen 
that prophecy had spoken of, and he disappeared. 

In England Owen Glendower was known only from 
the descriptions of those that hated and feared him. 
One proof of his greatness is that in English tradition 
the prejudices against him disappeared. In Shake- 
speare his belief in magic remains ; his boasts of a 
poetic gift which enabled him to frame to the harp 
"many an English ditty lovely well," and of his 
power to summon spirits from the vasty deep, are 
contrasted to his disadvantage with the rough 
manners of hasty, swearing Hotspur. But the final 
contrast is between the arrogance of the English 
custodian of Welsh castles and the dreamy, mystical 
leader of Welsh rebellion. On the one side there 
are — 

" Harsh rage, 
Defect of manners, want of government, 
Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain, 
The least of which, haunting a nobleman, 
Loseth men's hearts, and leaves behind a stain 
Upon the beauty of all parts besides." 

On the other hand, many of the best qualities of a 
ruler are described in the final English verdict on 
Owen Glendower — 

" In faith, he is a worthy gentleman, 
Exceedingly well read, and profited 
In strange concealments, valiant as a lion, 
And wondrous affable, and as bountiful 
As mines of India." 



XVII 

MORTIMER AND TUDOR 

The peasant revolt under Owen Glendower had 
failed. The Lancastrian legislation against the ad- 
mission of Welshmen to office and to the boroughs, 
passed in the heat of passion, remained on the statute 
book. Castle and town were to be pure English 
garrisons. Far on in the fifteenth century an attempt 
was made by legislation to prevent Welshmen from 
holding markets or fairs or to become citizens in 
towns. Under the last Lancastrian it was enacted 
that the king's villeins in North Wales were to be 
constrained to such labour as they had done before. 

Such attempts at perpetuating race hatred between 
those who were brought into close connection with 
each other in their ordinary daily life, and such 
attempts at checking the mighty economic causes 
which were making the villein free, could have no 
great effect. But the immediate results of the war 
were deplorable. Neither the bard nor the Lollard 
entered into the heritage of the friar. The bard was 

persecuted, the Lollard burnt. The savage spirit of 

288 



A TIMID MORTIMER 289 

war was added to the lust of land in Wales. Still 
there is a continuity of poets ; the sky was never so 
dull and cold that no lark sang. 

Prince Henry, who had burnt Sycharth and broken 
Glendower's power, had more happy connections with 
Wales. He had been born at Monmouth ; he loved 
the harp. When created prince of Wales his sceptre 
was of gold, like the coronet and the ring, and not 
of silver as before. He had been in favour of 
moderation at the beginning of the Welsh war. 
Welsh soldiers followed him to France, and fought 
at the battle of Agincourt. David Gam, who had 
attempted to kill Owen Glendower at Machynlleth, 
was one of the few men of note killed on the English 
side. 

The long French wars, and the gradually developing 
struggle betw^een the nobles in England, made it 
impossible for the Government to interfere in Wales. 
And, indeed, interference was unnecessary. The 
turbulent element was got rid of, for crowds of mer- 
cenaries went to harry suffering, divided France. 
The Mortimers had acquiesced in the seizure by the 
Lancastrians of the crown to which they themselves 
were the heirs. Edmund Mortimer, whom Glendower 
had tried to get possession of, was a youth of a gentle 
and timid nature, and repaid captivity and wrong by 
absolute fidelity to Henry the Fourth and to Henry 
the Fifth. A plot was formed again in 141 5 to carry 
him to Wales and declare him king of England. His 
brother-in-law Richard, earl of Cambridge, was put 
to death for his share in that plot. Edmund died 
childless before he was forty ; and his land and 

20 



A FUGITIVE PRINCE OF WALES 29 1 

claims passed on to Richard, the son of his sister 
Anne, who had a father's death to avenge as well as 
a claim to prosecute. 

Henry V. died young in the middle of his victorious 
career, and bequeathed the impossible task of retaining 
France and ruling the English nobles to a babe nine 
months old. So Henry VI. succeeded to the throne 
of England without being created prince of Wales. 
The story of his life is a sad one. The English 
barons, driven from France, brutalised and sullen, 
were paralysing the central government, substituting 
their own will for the system of justice, and gradually 
organising themselves, to avenge many feuds, into 
two definite parties. It was during the gathering 
storm, and during his father's madness, that the next 
prince of Wales was born. He was first seen in 
Wales in 1460, a child of seven, who had become 
prince of Wales before he was a year old. His 
mother, the heroic Margaret of Anjou, was bringing 
him to Harlech, fleeing in great tribulation before her 
victorious enemies, for the Wars of the Roses between 
York and Lancaster had begun. The little party of 
eight, tired and robbed, were pursued by the heir of 
the Mortimers ; they were fleeing to the protection of 
the Tudors. 

In the Wars of the Roses, the chief power of the 
final candidates in both houses lay in Wales. On the 
borders, with Ludlow as a centre, were the great 
Mortimer estates, from which the duke of York 
drew army after army. The White Rose candidate 
was Richard, duke of York, son of Anne Mortimer, 
descended from Llywelyn the Great. 



292 MORTIMER AND TUDOR 

In 1454 the two sons of the duke of York, Edward 
and Edmund, boys of twelve and eleven, were at 
Ludlow. They wrote a joint letter to their father in 
spring to thank him for their green gowns, and to ask 
for fine bonnets. In summer they wrote to say 
that they were studying diligently " in our young 
age," so as to get honour and worship in their old age. 
Their studies were soon to be cut short, however — 
one was to die a pitiful death, and the other to 
become king of England. 

But the Red Rose found support in Wales too. 
Next to little Prince Edward, the Red Rose heir was 
a child of three in the faithful custody of Jasper 
Tudor, to whom Margaret was now taking her son. 
The rise of the Tudors had been a rapid one, though 
they traced their descent back through Cadwaladr to 
Troy. Owen Tudor, a gentleman from Anglesey, 
had married Catharine of France, widow of Henry V. 
Their children, Edmund and Jasper, were, therefore, 
half-brothers to Henry VI., and were created earls of 
Richmond and Pembroke. Edmund had married 
Margaret Beaufort, the final heiress of John of Gaunt 
He died before his son was born in 1457, and the 
babe was placed under the care of Jasper Tudor. 
The prince of Wales who came to Harlech in 1460 
for refuge, was not to become king of England ; but 
the English throne was to be occupied by the grand- 
son of Anne Mortimer as Edward IV., and by the 
son of Edmund Tudor as Henry VII. 

The tempest of civil war, that had been gathering 
so long, broke upon England in 1455. The energy 
of the duke of York was in strange contrast to the 



A YORKIST BORDER 293 

weak hesitation of the saintly Lancastrian king 
Henry VI., who stood cahnly by the standard during 
the rush of battle, waiting for the arrows of his 
enemies to reach him, and wishing he was at his 
devotions. Henry pardoned wherever he was allowed 
to ; he rode among his enemies crowned with straw 
as resignedly as he rode wearing his own crown. But 
his wife, Margaret of Anjou, carried their young son 
Edward, tracked by enemies and attacked by robbers, 
to a place of refuge in Wales ; and, undaunted by 
defeat, brought army after army to defend his rights. 

The tide of war was continually rolling nearer 
Wales. In 1459, the Yorkists defeated the Lan- 
castrians in the running fight of Blore Heath, and 
mowed their nobles down around the king's tent in 
the short battle of Northampton. In 1460 the duke 
of York fell at the battle of Wakefield, and his head 
was sent around Yorkshire crowned in mockery with 
a paper crown. After the battle, his younger son 
Edmund, a lovable youth of fifteen, tried to escape. 
He was chased by Clifford, who said, as he stabbed 
him, "By God's blood, thy father slew mine, and so 
will I do thee." 

The Mortimers held the central borders. North of 
them was Lord Grey of Ruthin, who had betrayed the 
Lancastrians in the thick of the battle of Northampton. 
South of them was Sir William Herbert, a staunch 
Yorkist. He was the son of the Blue Knight of 
Raglan, and the grandson of David Gam ; and his 
service with Henry V. in France had given him an 
excellent military training. 

But the west of Wales, from Pembroke to Anglesey, 



294 MORTIMER AND TUDOR 

was strongly Lancastrian. Old Owen Tudor left his 
retirement, the young Richmond followed the army 
which his uncle Jasper was drawing together in west 
Wales. 

On receiving the news of the death of his father 
and brother at Wakefield, Edward, now the leader of 
the Yorkist party, gathered an army on the borders, 
which was supposed to be thirty thousand strong. 
The battle between the Welsh Yorkists and the Welsh 
Lancastrians was fought at Mortimer's Cross, in the 
Mortimer country, February 2, 1461. The day went 
against the Lancastrians, and Jasper fled. " And in 
that battle," wrote a citizen of London, " was Owen 
Tudor taken, and brought unto Hereford. And he 
was beheaded at the market-place, and his head set 
upon the highest step of the market cross. And a 
mad woman combed his hair, and washed away the 
blood from his face, and she got candles and set 
them about him burning, more than a hundred." 

" This Owen Tudor," he adds, " was father unto the 
earl of Pembroke, and had wedded Queen Catharine, 
King Henry the Sixth's mother. He believed and 
trusted all the way that he should not be beheaded, 
till he saw the axe and the block. And when he was 
in his doublet, he trusted on pardon and grace till the 
collar of his red velvet doublet was ripped off. Then 
he said — '■ That head shall lie on the stock that was 
wont to lie on Queen Catharine's lap,' — and put his 
heart and his mind wholly unto God, and full meekly 
took his death." 

The battle of St. Albans gave the Lancastrians 
their revenge. The little prince of Wales, eight years 



THE WARS OF THE ROSES 295 

old, was in the battle, wearing a pair of brigantines 
covered with purple velvet adorned with gold. He 
was knighted by his father when night had closed 
over the battle, and blessed by Morton. He knighted 
others, and sat in judgment on the prisoners. When 
asked by his mother what their punishment was to be 
he said that their heads were to be struck off. One 
of the Lancastrians, who had been lamed, made a 
grim little speech. " My lord," he said to the little 
prince who had just knighted him, " I have not 
deserved it, for I slew but fifteen men. For I stood 
still in one place, and they came unto me. But they 
abode still with me." 

Throughout the dreary dynastic war Wales was 
divided against itself Welshmen fell in hundreds on 
the English battlefields. The archers of Gwynedd, 
wearing the gold and crimson, and the ostrich 
feathers of their prince, pushed against the blinding 
snowstorm which enveloped the blood-stained field of 
Towton. The men of Harlech held out stubbornly 
for Lancaster against the Yorkist Herbert when 
every other castle had surrendered. " I held a castle 
in France," said the defender, " until every old woman 
in Wales heard of it ; I will hold a castle in Wales 
until every old woman in France hears of it." The 
same Herbert led the men of Gwent to fall in crowds 
for the Yorkist king at Edgecote, where he himself 
pleaded in vain for mercy for his brother, on account 
of his youth, never thinking of any hopeless attempt 
at getting mercy for himself Jasper Tudor hurried 
to join the Lancastrian army which, footsore and 
badly led, was driven panic-struck, with the prince of 



296 MORTIMER AND TUDOR 

Wales, to seek the useless protection of the sanctuaries 
of Tewkesbury. He heard of the disaster at Tewkes- 
bury, and of the murder of Prince Edward, and 
returned to Chepstow, carrying with him Henry 
Tudor, now the heir to the throne. At Chepstow an 
unsuccessful attempt was made by the Yorkist Roger 
Vaughan to take them ; the attempt cost Vaughan 
his life. They retired to Pembroke and were be- 
sieged there by the Yorkist Morgan Thomas, and 
kept in with ditch and trench ; but were delivered by 
Morgan Thomas's brother David, who was a Lan- 
castrian, and who put them on their way to their long 
exile in Brittany. 

Jasper Tudor was faithful to the Red Rose all 
through, Sir William Herbert lived and died for the 
White. But the Wars of the Roses produced no hero ; 
they helped to sear the conscience of the degenerate 
nobles that had very little of the heroic left in them. 
Far nobler than they was the nameless minstrel who 
first sang the national air of the " March of the Men 
of Harlech," if tradition is right in attributing its 
inspiring strains to this dead period ; or the Reginald 
Pecock who, in those days of chilling superstition and 
brutal persecution, pleaded at the danger of his life 
for a policy of persuasion and reason. 

The New Monarchy of the Yorkists took its spirit 
from the bitter dynastic war which gave being to it. 
Its aim was definite — to crush the nobles, and to 
restore the absolutism of the king. Its methods were 
those of the savage victor on the evening of battle 
— insolent, merciless, murderous. The conqueror 
became a tyrant, the conquered a traitor. But, while 



THE COURT OF EDWARD V. 2gy 

the nobles were being crushed, the peasant became 
more prosperous, and commerce began to flourish 
under the protection of the strong Yorkist hand. 

In Wales the war left many traces. It shattered 
the crumbling mediaeval social system. The serf 
found himself practically free ; the brigand found his 
occupation honourable. Noble fought against noble ; 
each treasured up memories of wrongs, which made a 
fight inevitable wherever retainers met. The very 
po@ts had been divided by the war — leuan Deulwyn 
bewailed the slaughter of the Yorkist Herberts at 
Edgecote, Lewis Glyn Cothi wandered from one 
hiding-place to the other after the defeat of the 
Lancastrians. 

To the borders of the wild country, full of strife 
and murder, came the new little prince of Wales to 
hold his court. Born in sanctuary, created prince of 
Wales by his father, Edward IV., when one year old, 
carried in the arms of Thomas Vaughan to witness 
ceremonies, Edward came to keep court in Wales in 
the third year of his life. The grants bestowed upon 
him by his father — castles from Narbeth to Presteign, 
the earldom of Pembroke, willingly given up by 
Herbert, the power of appointing the justices — almost 
make us forget that, when smothered in bed with his 
younger brother in the Tower of London ten years 
later, he was only a child of thirteen. Richard III., 
his uncle and his murderer, took his crown, and 
created his own son Edward, his only child, prince of 
Wales. This was in 1283, when Edward was ten 
years old. The child died in the next spring, before 
he could realise that an ominous calm in Wales fore- 
boded a CTreat storm. 



298 MORTIMER AND TUDOR 

I'he sleepless animosity of Morton, who had blessed 
Edward of Lancaster on the night of Wakefield, never 
allowed the embers of discontent to become cold. 
Buckingham, always splendid and scheming, had 
been entrusted by the new king with almost royal 
power in Wales. When they parted at Gloucester — 
the king returning to Warwick, gloomily determining 
on the death of his little nephew in the Tower, and 
Buckingham proceeding to Brecon — they already 
mistrusted each other. The king prepared a stock of 
Welsh bills, as glaives were called ; Buckingham 
gathered a Welsh army beyond the Severn. From 
Brecon he marched on Weobly, in October, 1483, 
declaring for the young earl of Richmond. Followed 
by the Yorkist Tretower, he found it impossible to 
cross the flooded Severn in order to join the English 
Lancastrians and discontented Yorkists. His army 
melted away, and he came to Shropshire, not to 
summon the Talbots to arms, but a fugitive that was 
soon handed over to the brutal revenge of the angry 
Richard. 

The abortive attempt called attention to the young 
exiled Tudor, and caused Richard to redouble his 
attempt to get the Bretons to give him up. Henry 
Tudor had two able plotters working for him — Bishop 
Morton, " who did far exceed them all in wisdom and 
gravity," and his own mother, now the wife of Lord 
Stanley. Their aim was to unite the Lancastrian 
and Yorkist opposition by proposing the marriage of 
Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, the sister of the 
murdered princes. The plot was made known to 
Margaret, Elizabeth's mother, by her Welsh physician, 



RICHMOND LANDS IN WALES 299 

Lewis, "a grave man and of no small experience." 
Bishop Morton escaped to Brittany ; the two women 
were not punished, " forasmuch as the working of a 
woman's wit was thought of small account." 

In 1484 an event occurred which spurred them on. 
During an eclipse of the sun, Anne Neville, Richard's 
queen, died. Even Yorkshire was shocked when it 
was rumoured that Elizabeth of York was to marry 
her uncle, and her brother's murderer. 

The exile Henry Tudor, cold and reserved and 
suspicious in spite of his youth, was hardly a match 
for the daring and restless Richard III. But he 
staked life and everything on one bold attempt when 
he sailed from Harfleur in August, 1485, with Jasper 
Tudor and two thousand men, and made for a port 
in South Wales. 

There was much searching of heart in Wales. The 
Welsh chiefs calculated whether Henry was likely to 
be successful ; the bards tried to discover whether he 
was the deliverer that was to come. Henry had 
failed to win Walter Herbert, " a man of ancient 
authority among the Welshmen," or Herbert's 
brother-in-law, the earl of Northumberland. With 
many misgivings the exiles left Haverfordwest, near 
their landing-place, and moved northwards towards 
the Teivy. The Pembrokeshire men welcomed 
Jasper. But there were rumours that the Herberts 
were marching against them ; and Rees ap Thomas, 
the practical ruler of Carmarthenshire, who divided the 
rule of South Wales with Herbert, gave no sign. At 
Cardigan they were cheered by the appearance of 
Richard Griffith and a little force. The cautious 



300 MORTIMER AND TUDOR 

lawyer, Morgan of Kidwelly, came to make terms for 
Rees ap Thomas ; and when Rees declared for Tudor, 
the adhesion of nearly the whole of South Wales was 
secured. Henry followed the Teivy, and from 
Machynlleth he crossed into the valley of the 
Severn, taking Newtown and Welshpool on his way. 
Rees ap Thomas followed with the Carmarthenshire 
men. The gates of Shrewsbury were at first closed 
against them by the Myttons, and then opened. At 
Newport, the Talbots, their first English adherents, 
joined them. Everything now depended on the 
Stanleys, who held North Wales for Richard. They 
did not impede the advance of Henry. Lord Stanley 
pleaded the sweating sickness as an excuse for not 
joining Richard, and his son. Lord Strange, who was 
practically a hostage with Richard, was detected 
trying to escape. As Henry moved on to Stafford, 
Lichfield, and Tamworth, two armies were moving 
on Leicester at the same time. Lord Stanley and 
his brother. Sir William Stanley, with their army of 
Cheshire and Lancashire men, moved in two divisions, 
watching the two armies of Henry and Richard as 
they came nearer to each other. 

On the 25th of August, 1485, Henry's army, 
under the red dragon standard and facing the sun, 
advanced up a gentle declivity in the country south 
of Bosworth, against the army of Richard. John de 
Vere, earl of Oxford, who had spent twelve years in 
a Yorkist prison after Barnet, led the right ; Sir 
William Stanley, having decided at last to take part 
in the battle, took his place on the left. Henry 
himself led the centre ac^ainst the centre of the kinc^'s 



THE BATTLE OF BOS WORTH 30I 

army, where Richard, anxious and determined after 
his night of dreams, was awaiting him. There were 
dark rumours of treason ; Lord Stanley watched at a 
distance, Northumberland stood still on Richard's 
right. But there was no hesitation in the middle of 
the field, where the two rivals, representatives of the 
bitter memories of half a century of feuds, sought 
each other. Richard fell, fighting to the last. He 
wore his crown in battle ; and, before the close of 
that decisive day. Lord Stanley placed it on the head 
of Henry Tudor. 

The stripped body of the dead king was thrown in 
indignity athwart the back of a horse ; but the 
massacre of nobles which followed so many of the 
battles of the dynastic wars, did not take place after 
Bosworth. It was to be followed by the union of the 
roses, red and white, under the Welsh sovereigns 
who were to lay the foundations of the modern 
greatness of the British people. 





TO THE MEMORY OF TUDUR ALED AND OTHERS. 

[From the sculpture by W. Goscor,ibc JoJin at Llansannan.) 

" Dead chief, the maiden loves 
Thy grave's sod for thy sake." 
302 



XVIII 



THE END OF THE OLD DAYS 



The accession of the Tudors marks the end of an 
old Wales, and the beginning of a new. The Wales 
of the princes disappears, the Wales of the peasant 
begins to take shape. 

Henry the Seventh, a Welshman leading a Welsh 
army, had become king of England. The prophecy 
that a Welshman was to be king of England, which 
had brought Llywelyn a crown of ivy and which had 
deceived Glendower, was at last fulfilled. The 
Welsh ceased to be rebels: they entered heartily into 
the new life of the period, from its literature to its 
piracy. The perfect reconciliation between them 
and the English is shown in the plays of Shake- 
speare. The sympathy of the audience goes with 
the pedantic, but honourable Fluellen when he says 
to the Pistol he had forced to eat a leek — " When 
you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, 
mock at 'em ; that is all." 

The king of England crushed the Welsh nobles 
ruthlessly in the Star Chamber and Court of the 



304 THE END OF THE OLD DAYS 

Marches, and they did not rebel ; he asked them to 
change an old religion they loved for a new religion 
they did not understand, and they sullenly acquiesced. 
The Act which gave them representation in Parlia- 
ment declared that their independence had been 
unreal and that their language was not the mother 
tongue of the isle of Britain ; but they blessed the 
mailed hand that gave them the privileges of 
Englishmen so ungraciously. 

They gained much, it is true. The power of the 
robber lords was broken, the country was cleared of 
brigands, representation in Parliament was granted, 
schools were founded, Welsh bishops were appointed. 
But they lost much as well. The Welsh nobles 
transferred their patronage from Welsh literature ; 
and the peasants had two centuries of translations of 
dreary English theology. The continuity of national 
thought became an under-current only. 

The religious enthusiasm which had been awakened 
by the controversies between Lollard and friar had 
died away. Sir John Oldcastle had held Builth 
against Glendower, though his tenants had taken the 
popular side. Soon, however, he was to be crushed 
by one of Owen's enemies. Lord Charlton of Powys, 
the agent of Lancastrian persecution in Wales. 
From his retirement in the hills of the Vyrnwy he 
was dragged to be hanged and burnt in London. 
But Lollardry did not die with him. In England the 
friars were told in 1461, even from pulpits, that 
Christ was poor and kept no treasure, and that he 
certainly never begged. When, later on, the Pope 
excommunicated those who wore shoes with peaks 



DECLINE OF RELIGION AND POETRY 305 

longer than two inches, men said they would wear 
their fashionable shoes whatever the Pope said, and 
shocked the orthodox by saying that "the Pope's 
curse would not kill a fly." In Wales the Lollard 
feeling found expression in bitter triads. " Three 
things are subjects of derision — an old hag displaying 
her finery, an old man trying to show his agility, and 
an old priest drunk." " The three curses of a neigh- 
bourhood are — a navigable river, a poor monastery, 
and private war between lords of castles ; for these 
will never be removed." One triad echoes the bitter- 
ness of the war, the affrighted conscience awakened 
by the Lollards, and the hatred of priests — "Three 
things there are which he who can may love — a fat 
priest singing mass, the cry of a soul in the clutches 
of the Fiend, and an English song." 

The religious feeling subsided when the Tudors 
came. It left behind it no moral earnestness and no 
desire for reform ; its degenerate strength ran to 
coarse invective and pessimistic satire. Bard and 
friar made up their quarrel as the Lollard disappeared. 
The poet sometimes tuned his lyre to the holiest of 
themes ; and, perhaps in the next song, fell to a 
world of sensuousness that was tinged with sensuality. 
Gutyn Owen describes how the ruddy wine flowed at 
the feasts given to bards by the abbot of Valle 
Crucis ; neither bard nor monk had an ideal exalted 
enough to quarrel about. 

The golden age of Welsh poetry came to an end 
with the Eisteddvod of Caerwys in 1524, and the 
death of Tudur Aled. It had degenerated steadily 
for a century. It had developed from the strong and 

21 



306 THE END OF THE OLD DAYS 

realistic odes of the bards of the period of inde- 
pendence to the love-song of the fourteenth century, 
to reach the perfection of its beauty in Davydd ap 
Gwilym. It then began to decline ; it became more 
artificial in diction, and less graceful in thought. 
The feelings aroused by the war of Glendower 
brought the rude shouts of battle into the once 
peaceful summer glade. Compared with Davydd's 
description of Maesaleg, lolo's description of Sycharth 
is a mere inventory, his passionate lament for Owen 
Glendower is prosaic compared with the golden 
splendour of Davydd's lament for Ivor Hael. Lewis 
Glyn Cothi's bitter invective is only relieved by an 
occasional touch of poetry ; and leuan Deulwyn's 
ode to Rees ap Thomas, if an example of the per- 
fection of ingenuity, is also an example of a poetry 
from which the soul has departed. But a more 
potent cause of decline was the growing artificiality 
which froze thought into the rigid mould of the 
alliterative metres. The great decline was gradual, 
and not quite unbroken. Davydd Nanmor's lament 
for his lost love, where he describes the absence of 
the characteristic blush from the cold face, is worthy 
of the period at its best. And Davydd ap Edmund 
rises sometimes, in spite of the rules he was forming 
as shackles for the thought of many generations, to 
descriptions that recall the great Davydd himself; as 
where he describes the charm of the contrast of red 
and white in his mistress' beauty — the one like last 
night's snow, the other like a shower of roses. 

The date usually given to the Carmarthen 
Eisteddvod is 145 1. It was held, by permission of 



DEGENERACY OF THE CHIEFS 30/ 

Henry VI., under the protection of Griffith ap 
Nicholas, who died fighting for the Yorkists at the 
battle of Mortimer's Cross. An attempt was made 
to organise the bards into a self-respecting order, and 
to make them compose in certain complex metres. 
This was partly a result, and partly a cause, of the 
gradual degeneracy. With artificial metres and 
stereotyped sentiment, the bard's handicraft became 
a mechanical one ; and the elegy became a careful 
catalogue of family virtues and a most valuable and 
careful narration of family history. An occasional 
touch of the old naturalness in Davydd ap Edmund, 
many an echo of the old melody in Tudur A led, 
cannot hide the fact that the thought of the golden 
age was deteriorating, and was soon to end in 
pedigrees, grammars, and dictionaries. 

The cause of the loss of national vitality, as shown 
in the gradual disappearance of strength of thought 
and beauty of diction, is the change that came over 
the character of the Welsh chiefs. In the earlier 
poets, the prince is a necessity ; to the later triad 
writer, he is a necessary evil. In earlier times the 
chiefs had been the representatives of their kin ; they 
were now the champions of their own personal 
interests against kinsman and brother. In the war 
of independence, the chief flung himself to certain 
destruction in blind loyalty to his prince ; in the 
march to Bosworth, Sir Rees ap Thomas wrung 
promises from his prince on the eve of his last 
uncertain attempt. 

The interests of the chief and the villein were no 
longer the same. In the Wars of the Roses Lewis 



308 THE END OF THE OLD DAYS 

Glyn Cothi, though a Lancastrian, had echoed the 
earlier EngHsh praise of the plough and the plough- 
man ; the sympathy for the peasant remained in the 
sixteenth century, but it was accompanied by a 
denunciation of the unscrupulous cruelty of the 
lord. 

The " lord of land," as Welsh chief and English 
baron alike are called, had often ceased to be Welsh 
in sympathy. In the triads of the fifteenth century, 
the lord, who had ceased to take an interest in 
literature, is mercilessly attacked, not only for his 
arrogance and unscrupulousness, but also for his 
stupidity. In the sixteenth century, though men like 
William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, would speak 
nothing but Welsh to those who understood it, the 
burden of many a complaint is that the Welsh upper 
class had become neglectful of the language and 
literature of the country. In the seventeenth century, 
though a {^w old Welsh houses were still hospitable 
to the bard, Edward Morris bewails the fact that the 
Welsh muse had no patron left ; and the bard turned 
sorrowfully from the old faithless patrons of song, 
and tuned his harp to peasant ears. 

The lord had ceased to be the chief of the kin, and 
had become the lord of the land. Once his great aim 
was to be a worthy leader and a successful protector 
of his kin : now his only aim was to become the sole 
possessor of their land. Once he was chief of his 
people, bound to them by every tie of mutual advan- 
tage and mutual devotion, according to the laws of 
Howel ; now his interests are not the same as theirs, 
he uses the new law to turn them adrift from the 



REVOLUTION 3O9 

land and from all privileges associated with their old 
relations to it. To the older bard the chief is the 
ideal of chivalry — generous, self-sacrificing, patriotic, 
a patron of sweet song and perfect tale. To the new 
triad writer he is selfish, grasping, miserly, and in- 
different to literature. " Three things," he says con- 
temptuously, " will make as good a lord of land as 
any — a calf's tail, a gate-post, and a hanging dog." 

The introduction of the law of primogeniture into 
Wales made the lord all the more anxious to get the 
land into his own hands, and the separation of chief 
and kin more complete. Sir Rees ap Thomas, the 
greatest Welsh chief of Tudor times, was thoroughly 
hated by his weaker neighbours, for there was no 
land on Towy side that was ^afe from his unscru- 
pulous cupidity. Nothing cared he for the old 
customs, or for the sighs of those that he dispossessed. 
Instead of the greatness of Llywelyn and the majesty 
of Glendower, the new times and the new law brought 
the rapacious landlord of the sixteenth century and 
the contemptible cavalier squire of the seventeenth. \ 
But the Welsh never lost entirely their love for the 
memory of those who, in days of independence and 
oppression alike, led them into so many honourable 
failures and suffered so much for them. They 
idealised their memory, and were willing to say of the 
lost chief, with Tudur Aled : — 

"Dead chief, the maiden loves 
Thy grave's sod for thy sake." 



XIX 



THE NEW SHIRES 



The Tudors traced their descent from Cadwaladr, 
the last British king. It is true that they had in 
them the royal blood of North and of South Wales. 
They had fought for Llywelyn the Great, they had 
representatives at Cressy and Agincourt, they had 
supported their kinsman Glendower, they had married 
into the French and into the English royal families. 
It was partly good fortune, and partly their own 
determination that their fortune should be good, that 
brought them to the brilliant position they occupied 
during the sixteenth century, and enabled them to 
become the creators of modern Britain in all the 
essential aspects of its history. Their own steady 
business-like career, their unwillingness to sacrifice 
and their lack of gratitude, the strong will which 
guided their country through so many momentous 
changes, the cool calculating spirit which enabled 
them to judge and to use the turbulent passions and 
the self-sacrificing virtues of their times — all these are 
in strange contrast to the passionate loyalty of 



THE ACT OF UNION 3II 

reformer and navigator and poet by which they were 
surrounded. 

In Wales -they rode rough-shod over all sentiment 
and tradition ; and established, in their methodical 
pitiless way, a strong system of justice and a real 
political union with England. They were ex- 
ceedingly popular, and Mary was not less popular 
than the others. Henry VII. could always call Rees 
ap Thomas with an army of archers to his aid. 
Welshmen flocked to the Court, from the Herberts 
and the Cecils, who gave the sovereigns counsel in 
building their absolutism, to the lowly family of 
brewers from whom came Oliver Cromwell to 
subvert that absolutism, and then to imitate it. 

Of the five Tudor sovereigns, Henry VIII. alone 
was prince of Wales. Arthur, Henry VI I. 's eldest 
son, was created prince when three years old ; and, 
at his early death, Henry succeeded him, in the 
twelfth year of his age. Of Henry VIII.'s children, 
Mary alone held court at Ludlow, though she was 
not crowned princess of Wales. 

The three most important movements in the 
Wales of Tudor times were the political reorganisa- 
tion, the reform of the system of justice, and the reli- 
gious reformation. 

The political reorganisation was the work of 
Thomas Cromwell. The Act of 1535 united Wales 
to England, and declared that the union was to 
mean the abolition of Welsh customs and laws and 
the extirpation of the Welsh language. It shows 
an honest desire to extend to Welshmen all the 
political advantages then enjoyed by Englishmen ; 



312 THE NEW SHIRES 

but Cromwell's methods of carrying out his policy 
in Wales, as in Ireland, were very tyrannical, and 
unnecessarily harsh. He knew that he had aroused 
the hostility of the Welsh by his political and by his 
religious policy, and feared at one time that the high- 
spirited people, so unwillingly driven, would rise in 
favour of the old religion and Princess Mary. 

The union of 1535 brought two great benefits to 
Wales — its march lordships became shire ground, and 
it was given representation in Parliament. 

The king had entered into the heritage, not only of 
the old princes of Wales and the earls of Chester, 
but of the dukes of Lancaster and of the Mortimers 
as well. So it was easier for Henry VHI. than for 
any previous king to reduce the march lordships into 
shire ground. 

We have seen that the western part of Wales, from 
the Conway to the Towy, had been turned into five 
shires by Edward I. after the fall of Llywelyn : 
Anglesey, Carnarvonshire, Merionethshire, Cardigan- 
shire, and Carmarthenshire. Flintshire was formed 
at the same time of the district between Chester and 
Rhuddlan, which had been often conquered and had as 
often rebelled. Pembrokeshire and Glamorganshire 
were growing into shires too ; they had been governed 
like shires by their English earls. Five new shires 
were created by the Tudors out of the march lord- 
ships. Denbighshire was formed out of two districts 
that are almost separated from each other where the 
boundaries of the older shires of Merioneth and 
Flint nearly touch. The first part is the hilly 
Hiraethog district, between the Conway and the 



END OF THE MARCH LORDSHIPS 313 

Clwyd, and the upper part of the Vale of Clwyd, 
over most of which the lordships of Denbigh and 
Ruthin extended. The second part consists of the 
plain of Welsh Maelor, in the lower valley of the 
Dee, and the northern portion of the Berwyn as far 
south as the river Rhaiadr. 

South of this second portion of Denbighshire, 
Montgomeryshire was formed out of two very 
unequal portions. The first, being nearly all the 
country drained by the upper Severn and its tribu- 
taries, is the eastern slope of the Berwyn. It contains 
old Arwystli, and the castles of Montgomery and 
Powys. The second part is the eastern valley of the 
Dovey, including Cyveiliog and the old Roman town 
of Machynlleth. 

South of the watershed of the Severn and the 
Wye, Radnorshire was formed out of the high moor- 
lands watered by the upper parts of the tributaries of 
the Wye. It is made up almost entirely of the lord- 
ships carved out of Melenydd and Elvel. 

Between the southern bank of the upper Wye 
and the southern watershed of the Usk, Brecknock- 
shire was formed from the lordships of old Brychei- 
niog. It included the castles of Builth, Talgarth 
and Brecon. 

The lowlands between Brecknockshire and the 
mouth of the Severn became the new shire of Mon- 
mouth. It includes the greater part of Gwent and 
the Gwynllwg portion of old Morgannwg ; thus 
extending westwards from the W^e and the Monnow, 
covering the rich land through which the red sluggish 
Usk flows to the Severn se-a, to the Rumney. It 



3 14 THE NEW SHIRES 

includes the castles of Abergavenny, Usk, Chepstow, 
and Newport. It has also Caerleon, the traditional 
capital of Wales ; Tintern, the most beautiful of 
Welsh abbeys, where the daughters of William 
Marshall are buried ; and Maesaleg, now called 
Bassaleg, the home of Ivor the Generous, so often 
described by Davydd ap Gwilym. Caerleon is now 
a small village, Tintern is a beautiful ruin, and the 
site of Ivor's home is a green glade. 

Thus a continuous tract of march land, extending 
from the Irish Sea to the Severn sea, was formed into 
five shires, between England and the older shires of 
Wales. But a great number of march lordships were 
not included in these ; they were added to the older 
Welsh shires, or to the English border shires. 

So many were added to Glamorganshire and 
Pembrokeshire that, in both shires, the additions 
are far more extensive than the little shires then in 
course of formation around Cardiff and Pembroke 
castles. Glamorganshire became as extensive as the 
old Morgannwg ; it had not Gwynllwg in the east, 
but it had Gower, which had not been part of old 
Morgannwg, in the west. Though its vale is almost 
dotted with castles, from Cardiff and Caerphilly to 
Neath and Swansea, the divisions of Mor^annwof 
were still mostly the old tribal divisions, and not 
new districts formed around castles. Senghenydd, 
Miskin, Glynrhonddu, Talavan, Avan, Ogmore, Neath, 
Gower, Ruthyn, and others, still bore their old Welsh 
names. 

Pembrokeshire was extended northwards to the 
valley of the lower Teivy, and the lordships between 



THE FIXING OF BOUNDARIES 315 

it and the border of Carmarthenshire were divided 
between the two shires. In 1542 the lordship of 
Lacharn was transferred from Pembrokeshire to 
Carmarthenshire. 

Pembrokeshire now included, not only the English 
district of Pembroke, but the half Welsh district of 
Haverfordwest and Narberth, and the purely Welsh 
districts from St. David's to Cilgeran. 

Carmarthenshire was extended in three directions. 
By its getting Llandovery and Abermarles the Towy 
became a Carmarthenshire river from where it leaves 
the uplands of Plinlimmon to the sea. By getting 
Carnwyllion and Kidwelly, it spread to the sea in the 
south ; and by getting Newcastle in Emlyn, it reached 
the middle valley of the Teivy in the north. It 
included Dynevor, the centre of Welsh resistance ; 
and Carmarthen, the most important port in Wales 
in mediaeval times. 

To Cardiganshire were added lordships which made 
its boundaries perfect from a geographical and from 
a historical point of view. The lordship of Tregaron 
extended its boundaries over the whole of the upper 
valley of the Teivy, and the Ic^rdship of Geneu'r Glyn 
brought it to the Dovey in the north. 

To Merionethshire was added the lordship of 
Mawddwy, in the upper valley of the Dovey, con- 
nected with it by two high passes, a veritable nest 
of brigands. 

There were a few later changes, but the shire 
system of Wales may be looked upon as practically 
complete by 1536. A little later the subdivision of 
the new shires into hundreds or commotes was 
completed. 




CADER IUK.1S. 

{From a drawing by W. W. Goddard.) 



316 



GEOGRAPHICAL AND TRIBAL FEATURES 317 

Merionethshire is a collection of mountain tops. 
No river flows into it. Its valleys open to every 
point of the compass, it has no real capital ; its 
geography is that of Wales in miniature. It contains 
portions of Gwynedd and Powys ; all the dialects of 
Powys, Gwynedd, and northern Ceredigion are repre- 
sented in it. Gerald drew upon his imagination when 
he said that its inhabitants could ascend the mountains 
and confer with each other from the tops ; but its 
geography is such that it was, at the best, an unsatis- 
factory unit for local government. Denbighshire is a 
collection of portions of valleys — of the Conway, the 
Clwyd, the Dee, and the Ceiriog ; but the variety of 
dialects and character is not so great as one might be 
led to suppose by its extreme length and narrow 
middle portion. The various districts of Carnarvon- 
shire are given a kind of unity by the presence of 
Snowdon, which overlooks them all ; Montgomery- 
shire is the Severn land. Anglesey, as Mon is now 
officially designated, is made by the sea into the shire 
whose people have the most definite characteristics 
of dialect and character. Flintshire, from its small 
extent and featureless geography, is a compact 
territory between the watershed of the Clwyd and 
the estuary of the Dee. There is a detached 
portion of it, English Maelor, however, on the eastern 
side of the Dee. 

Each of the shires of South Wales represents some 
old Welsh kingdom, and has the dialect and the 
characteristic of some old Welsh tribe, though the 
boundaries have been changed to some extent. 
Radnorshire contains the two districts of Elvel and 



3l8 THE NEW SHIRES 

Melenydd, united by fierce hatred caused by many 
a family feud over respective rights to the moorlands 
and sheep runs of Plinlimmon. Brecknockshire, 
Monmouthshire, and Glamorganshire are, respectively, 
Brycheiniog, Gwent, and Morgannwg ; though the 
boundaries are not exactly the same, the new shire 
in each case has the dialect and the character of the 
old tribal kingdom. Carmarthenshire, which gave to 
old Wales so many of its princes and to new Wales 
so many of its leaders, is the old Deheubarth, though 
shorn of many fair districts. Cardiganshire, with its 
definite geographical unity mirrored in the strongly 
marked characteristics of its people, is the old 
Ceredigion. Pembrokeshire, divided then as now 
between two races which at first had very little 
in common, is the abiding part of old Dyved. 

Many of the lordships of the march were added to 
the old English shires. The Red Cantrev of Gwent, 
all the land east of the Wye lower than Monmouth, 
was added to Gloucestershire. Ewyas and Wigmore, 
the homes of the Lacys and the Mortimers, were 
added to Herefordshire. A great part of eastern 
Powys, including Oswestry and Ellesmere, was added 
to the Shropshire whose county town was the old 
capital of Powys. 

The Tudor legislation made fairly definite the 
boundary line between England and Wales that 
had been so indefinite before. It is quite arbitrary. 
There may have been an attempt to follow Offa's 
dyke, and to fix the boundary where the mountains 
cease and the plains begin. But the boundary lines 
of the tiny lordships which formed a fringe to the 



THE BOUNDARY LINE 319 

mountains had also to be followed. Just outside the 
new boundary were the towns that had exercised 
most influence on Wales — Chester, from which the 
oppression and the justice of the northern part of 
Wales came ; Shrewsbury, with more than half of its 
population still Welsh-speaking in Tudor times, the 
mart of central Wales ; Hereford, the market-place 
of southern Wales and the model of all the Welsh 
chartered towns ; Gloucester, from which Glamorgan 
was governed for so long. 

The boundary line had, of course, nothing to do 
with race. It was not a language boundary either ; 
it included many English-speaking districts in Wales, 
it excluded many extensive Welsh-speaking districts. 
It does not coincide with the ecclesiastical boundary 
line ; Oswestry is still in the diocese of St. Asaph, 
and the diocese of Llandaff still includes Monmouth- 
shire. 

Monmouthshire was declared to be an Eneflish 
shire, and, for the purposes of the administration 
of justice, it was excluded from the Welsh system. 
In all other respects, Monmouthshire is still part of 
Wales. Its life is thoroughly Welsh. In the Middle 
Ages it shared with Glamorgan the enthusiastic praise 
of Davydd ap Gwilym, who spent much of his life in 
it ; the great Welsh poet of modern times, Islwyn, 
was born in it and spent his life within it. " Part of 
Wales art thou still, my Monmouth," he sang, " the 
spirit of the mountains has not left thee, though thy 
name was once placed among those of the shires of 
another land." 

The division into shires brought into Wales a 



3^0 THE NEW SHIRES 

definite and uniform political administration. It 
gave Wales greater unity, it also bound it more 
definitely to England. The shire was the unit, not 
only for local government, but also for representation 
in Parliament. Edward II., the first prince of Wales, 
had tried to bring Wales into the parliamentary 
system more than two hundred years before, but 
had not succeeded. The English parliament taxed 
Wales and determined its levy of archers, though it 
was not represented. In 1535 its shires and boroughs 
were granted representation in Parliament. Every 
shire, except Merioneth and Monmouth, had two 
members, one for the shire and one for the shire 
town. Merioneth had only one member. Mon- 
mouthshire had three — two for the shire and one for 
the shire town. In 1542 Haverfordwest was made 
into a county in itself, and given one representative 
in Parliament. 

With the exception of the period of the Common- 
wealth, the representation of Wales remained the 
same till 1832. Its members were, as a rule, heads 
of the chief Welsh families — such as Bulkeleys, 
Glynnes, Herberts, Lloyds, Mansels, Morgans, Prices 
Salisburys, Vaughans, Wynns. 




XX 



THE COURT OF WALES 



The chief aim of Tudor legislation with regard 
to Wales was to bring it under a uniform and 
efficient system of justice. Before the creation of 
the new shires, the march lordships, nearly a 
hundred and fifty in number, had their independent 
little systems of law, and their own courts ; the 
law in each case being a development of Welsh 
and English law. The smaller lordships might 
become, as some of them did, a place of refuge 
for evildoers. Feuds fought out in private wars, 
murder, and arson were common in the wild Severn 
district ; and the outlaws and fugitives were safe 
when they had crossed the river from one lordship 
to the other. 

A special court for Wales had long been develop- 
ing. Edward IV., the first of the New Monarchs, 
was the heir of the Mortimers ; and he had deter- 
mined to reduce the borders, which he knew so well, 
under the direct control of tiie king. He did not live 
to do much ; but the queen and the little prince of 

22 321 



322 THE COURT OF WALES 

Wales were frequently at Ludlow, whence an attempt 
was made to use the new court in the marches as the 
Star Chamber was used in England. 

Under the Tudors an energetic and a continuous 
policy succeeded in making the king's law supreme 
in Wales. Three institutions were used, the Star 
Chamber, the Court of the Council of Wales and the 
Marches, and the Great Sessions of Wales. 

It was before the Star Chamber that the most 
powerful lords would be summoned — for conspiring 
against the king, for oppressing their subjects, or 
for waging private war. Private war was the cause 
of most cases of interference by the king in Wales. 
An eye-witness describes a scene between two lords 
in the Star Chamber in Cardinal Wolsey's presence. 
They were the two most powerful magnates in 
Wales — Lord Ferrers, the king's justiciar, and Rees 
ap Griffith, the young and popular grandson of Sir 
Rees ap Thomas, who had been justiciar. They 
happened to come to Carmarthen at the same time ; 
a fight between their retainers ended in a quarrel 
between the two nobles. They retired to their 
estates, and began to prepare for a renewal of the 
struggle. The king heard of their doings, and they 
were promptly summoned to the Star Chamber. 
They hurled all kinds of accusations at each other 
in Wolsey's presence — of oppression of the people, 
and of the selling of justice. The accusations were 
such that " thousands of poor men," thought the 
eye-witness of the scene, " would not for any amount 
of wealth have had them brought against them." 
They were soundly rated by the Cardinal. Lord 



WELSHMEN IN THE STAR CHAMBER 323 

Ferrers was told that, being old enough to be Rees' 
father, he ought not to have acted so violently and 
so foolishly. They were to depart arm in arm, 
and to make peace between their followers. A 
hundred years before, and the quarrel would have 
been fought out in a private war, in which the 
oppressed peasantry would have been forced to shed 
each other's blood in order to satisfy their lords' 
passionate desire for revenge. But both men knew 
the king too well to defy the Star Chamber. Rees' 
grandfather had done more than any one man to 
place Henry VII. on his throne and to keep the 
shaking throne steady ; Rees' father had been too 
independent, and he had paid for his temerity with 
his head. It is no wonder that the Star Chamber 
was so popular in Tudor times. It saved Wales 
. from what the triads regard as one of the three great 
curses of a country — a private war between lords. 

The oppression of tenants, and crimes inadequately 
punished in the march courts, were gradually sub- 
jected to another court, the Court of the Council 
of the Marches of Wales. Its task had been begun 
by the Yorkists ; Henry VII. made it a permanent 
court at Ludlow, and gave it definite work to do. 
It had jurisdiction, not only over Wales and its 
marches, but over the four old English border 
shires of Shropshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, 
and Gloucestershire. Its work was to execute 
justice on felons, to suppress riots, and to hear the 
complaints of all poor Welsh persons oppressed or 
wronged, as well as the complaints of the English in 
the English shires. 




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BISHOP ROWLAND LEE 325 

The first presidents of the Court of Wales were 
able and vigorous men, almost ruthless in their 
severity. The first was William Smythe, bishop of 
Lincoln, and founder of Brasenose College, Oxford. 
The second was Geoffrey Blyth, bishop of Lichfield, 
who had served on an embassy from the king to 
Hungary. The fourth was John Voysey, bishop of 
Exeter. 

It was when Rowland Lee, bishop of Lichfield, 
became president that the real work of the Court of 
Wales was done. He was at Ludlow between 1 5 34 
and 1543, and so he ruled Wales during the time that 
Thomas Cromwell's indefatigable efforts made the 
king's power felt in every corner of his realm. 
Bishop Lee threw himself into his work with an 
energy that won Cromwell's admiration. He 
travelled through the districts of Rhaiadr and Brecon, 
and thoroughly enjoyed himself in the thick of the 
thieves. Not even death could snatch his prey from 
the relentless bishop ; dead bodies were brought in 
sacks on horseback to swing on the Ludlow gibbets. 
It was a wild superstitious neighbourhood, and the 
ghastly procession with the sack carried far greater 
terror than an army which could dispense a more 
summary kind of justice. 

Bishop Lee was followed by Bishop Sampson, of 
Lichfield, who allowed a felon to escape ; and by the 
ambitious and unscrupulous earl of Northumber- 
land, who was put to death by Mary. In 1550 
William Herbert became president. 

William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke, could 
neither read nor write ; though he signs his name — in 



326 THE COURT OF WALES 

capital letters. It is said of him also that he only 
knew his own language well. It is to be supposed 
that the language was Welsh, for he would only 
speak that language to a brother Welshman. But 
the bony, red-haired Welshman, with his sharp eye 
and stern look, won the regard of Henry VIII., 
Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth successively ; 
and he served them all faithfully and well. When 
so many men who could read and write lost their 
heads, Herbert rivalled Cecil as an adroit politician. 
He helped Henry VIII. to suppress the monasteries ; 
he relieved Exeter with two thousand Welshmen 
during the Cornish rising against Somerset ; he 
helped Northumberland to secure the succession of 
Lady Jane Grey ; he carried the sword of state 
before Mary on her wedding day ; he persuaded 
Elizabeth to take up a Protestant policy. He 
was the chief figure in all the sudden changes 
which brought so many men low, and he died in 
peace. 

After Bishop Heath and Bishop Bourne and Lord 
Williams of Thame, Sir Henry Sidney became 
president in 1560, and held the office for more 
than a quarter of a century. Taking a keen 
interest in literature and education, sympathising 
with the poor and the oppressed, this high-souled 
governor took away the terror with which Bishop 
Lee had clothed his office, and made men revere 
it for its justice and for its mercy. " Great it is," 
he wrote, nearly at the end of his long term of office, 
" that, in some sort, I govern the third part of this 
realm, under her most excellent majesty ; high it is, 



S/J^ HENRY SIDNEY 327 

for by that I have precedence of great personages 
and far my betters ; happy it is, for the goodness 
of the people whom I govern ; and most happy it is 
for the commodity I have, by the authority of that 
place, to do good every day." 

Sir Henry Sidney's labours deserved much of 
Elizabeth, and his wife had caught smallpox from 
the queen when trying to shield her from death. But 
he got nothing, not so much ground " as I can 
cover with my foot." All his fees amounted to less 
than a hundred marks a year. Yet he could point 
with pride to what he had done for the castles of 
Ludlow, Wigmore, and Montgomery. A more 
permanent and valuable work was the incorruptible 
administration of justice in that district of oppression 
and corruption. The people that brought their 
complaints before him were poor, some of them 
" very beggars." 

The litigious spirit which filled Wales during the 
later sixteenth century was due to the change that 
was then coming over the system of land tenure. 
Primogeniture had been introduced to every part 
of Wales by the Act of 1535. The villein found 
himself driven from the land which he regarded 
as his own as long as he paid the money fixed 
upon as commutation for the ancient labour or 
food rents. It was difficult to know whether, by 
law, he owned his own land, or was a tenant who 
could be ejected at the will of a landowner. The 
lords hungered for land, the tenant clung to his 
homestead ; and crowds thronged to Ludlow to 
demand justice. 



328 THE COURT OF WALES 

Sir Henry Sidney's famous children — Philip and 
Mary — spent most of their childhood at Ludlow. 
Mary married Henry, earl of Pembroke, and it was 
at their home at Wilton that Philip Sidney wrote his 
Arcadia. Henry succeeded his father-in-law and 
father as president of the Court of Wales. He had 
shown already, in a magnificent feast at Cardiff, that 
his policy was one of conciliatory moderation. Like 
his wife, he was a patron of learning, and he threw 
himself with ardour into the activity and hopes of 
that time of discovery of worlds and of truths. 
When the sixteenth century came to an end, 
Elizabeth was still wielding the sceptre of England ; 
and at the Court of Wales there ruled Mary Herbert 
whom Spenser described as the ornament of woman- 
kind, whose youthful beauty Shakespeare saw 
mirrored in her son, and of whom Ben Jonson 
wrote — 

** Death ! Ere thou hast slain another 
Wise and fair and good as she, 
Time shall throw a dart at thee." 

During the seventeenth century the Court of 
Wales lost much of its importance. The most 
interesting facts about it are that Richard Baxter 
was the chaplain to it, and that Milton's Codius 
was written to be acted at Ludlow by the children 
of one of its presidents. It was abolished by the 
Long Parliament in 1642, restored in 1660, and 
finally abolished in 1689. 

The Court of Wales had ceased to be important 
at the end of the Tudor period, partly because its 



FOUR CIRCUITS 329 

work was done by Bishop Lee and Sir Henry 
Sidney, partly because another institution had been 
created to take its place. The Tudors, in spite of 
their desire to assimilate Wales to England in every 
possible way, saw that two separate systems of law 
were necessary. The distance between Wales and 
Westminster was great, and Welsh litigants were 
poor. So, while making every effort, as in England, 
to secure efficient sheriffs and trustworthy justices 
of the peace and impartial jurors, Henry VHI. 
established high courts of justice in Wales itself. 
There had been a justice of Snowdon and a justice 
of South Wales since 1284; additional justices were 
now created to administer law in the march lordships 
that had been formed into shires in 1535. 

In 1535 twelve Welsh shires were grouped in four 
circuits. In each of these, it was further enacted in 
1542, a court was to sit twice a year. The courts 
were called the Great Sessions of Wales. The 
Justice of Chester kept sessions in Denbighshire, 
Flintshire, and Montgomeryshire ; the Justice of 
North Wales in Anglesey, Carnarvonshire, and 
Merioneth ; a third justice in Cardiganshire, Carmar- 
thenshire, and Pembrokeshire ; and a fourth in 
Glamorgan, Brecknock, and Radnorshire. 



XXI 



THE GREAT SESSIONS 



In Wales, as in England, there have been two 
great periods of the revival of local government — 
during the second half of the sixteenth century and 
during the second half of the nineteenth. But the 
revival meant more in Wales. It was more than 
the introduction of a better form of government ; it 
realised a dream that had never been forgotten, and 
cannot be. Welsh independence, in a measure that 
would have satisfied Llywelyn, is being gradually 
restored in the form of local government. Under the 
Tudors the shire became a unit for local government ; 
Wales had an independent system of law courts ; and 
the towns, which had been in theory hostile garrisons, 
became the centres of national life. 

At the end of the reign of Elizabeth, the court of 
the march lord, often a place of refuge for the worst 
criminals, and always an instrument of almost 
unchecked despotism, was a thing of the past. The 
Court of Wales had become useless with the disap- 
pearance of the old lawlessness ; and those who 



THE WELSH JUSTICES 33 1 

owed the peace of the new times to it, especially in 
the march districts, were beginning to clamour for 
its repeal. But the power of the local governors — 
justice, sheriff, and justice of the peace — remained. 

The justice of the three shires held a court of 
Great Sessions in each shire twice a year. He sat 
for six days, and fifteen days' notice of his coming 
had been given to the people. . The chamberlain 
kept the seals for the original writ which began the 
suit ; the other seal, for the judicial writ which com- 
manded execution, was kept by the justice. The 
attorney and solicitor, the proto-notary for recording 
judgments and fines in civil cases, and the clerk of the 
crown for recording in criminal cases, followed the 
justice. The marshal attended the person of the 
judge as he came into court ; the crier called forth 
the persons required, and imposed silence on the 
people. All criminal cases, all civil cases, all 
questions relating to land, all rebellions against the 
law, came before the Great Session, which had in 
Wales the jurisdiction exercised in England by the 
courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas and by 
the justices of assize. If there was such a multitude 
of pleas that the justice could not hear them within 
six days, those that were left over were tried before a 
deputy justice in petty sessions. 

Of the Welsh justices the two best known are 
Bradshaw and Jeffreys. Bradshaw and Jeffreys, the 
one by his learning and the other by his natural 
ability, became famous in their professions. Bradshaw 
presided over the trial of Charles the First, and 
signed his death warrant in January, 1649 ; in the 



332 THE GREAT SESSIONS 

following years he was on circuit in the upper Severn 
valley, from Llanvyllin to Llanidloes. Jeffreys was 
made justice in 1680, but the sphere of his chief 
activity was the neighbouring England, where he 
became Lord Chief Justice before he was forty years 
of age. He presided over the trials of the noble 
Algernon Sidney, the villainous Titus Oates, the 
saintly Baxter, and the misguided west country 
people who had risen in rebellion against James II. 
in favour of the worthless Monmouth. Bradshaw 
was buried at Westminster Abbey ; but at the 
Restoration, his body was dragged thence on a sledge, 
with the bodies of Oliver Cromwell and Ireton, so 
that the partisans of restored monarchy might wreak 
their ghastly vengeance on the dead. Jeffreys rose 
to power as the instrument of that restored monarchy, 
in its most absolute form. He was often brutal and 
insolent, though not more so than contemporary 
judges generally. His great ability and energy 
were given entirely to the service of James II., and 
he died in the Tower at the Revolution of 1688. The 
vengeance of the mob was not wreaked on his body ; 
it has been reserved for modern novelists and popular 
historians to make a monster of him. 

Below the Great Session, each shire had eight 
justices of the peace. The favourite Tudor method 
of government was to substitute the justice of the 
peace, who looked upon his office as an honour con- 
ferred by the Crown, for the baron who held that his 
court was independent of the king. In Wales the 
number was restricted, probably in order that the 
body of justices might be autocratic enough. There 



THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE 333 

was no lack of those who desired the honour, " for, 
through the ambition of many, it is counted a credit 
to be burthened with the authority." Their com- 
mission gave them power to preserve the peace, and 
to resist and punish all turbulent persons. They held 
their sessions quarterly ; and all proceedings before 
them were entered by the clerks of the peace. The 
power of the justice of the peace grew continually, 
especially during the later years of Elizabeth, when 
the parish system was revived and the relief of the 
poor organised. 

The sheriff of each shire was the executive officer. 
He was selected for one year by the king out of three 
nominated by the president, council, and justices of 
Wales. Besides his executive work, he had judicial 
work in two courts. One was the sheriffs tourn, a 
circuit of his shire, in which he inquired in various 
places concerning breaches of the law. The other 
was the county court, in which small civil cases, 
under the value of forty shillings, were determined. 
The other shire officials were the escheator, who 
watched over the property and rights of the Crown ; 
and the two coroners, elected by the freeholders to 
inquire why, and through whom, every person dying 
of a violent death came to his end. 

The hundred, the subdivision of the shire, had its 
constables and its bailiffs ; the former preserved the 
peace in each hundred, the latter attended the justices 
in session. In Wales, as in England, the parish 
system was revived, and the vestry became a little 
local senate. 

The characteristic of the whole system is the use 



334 THE GREAT SESSIONS 

made of the help of the people themselves. The 
justices of the peace, it is true, had interests directly 
opposed to those of the people they governed : they 
were often alienated from them by contempt for their 
race, and by ignorance of their language ; but their 
appointment was the first stage in the development 
of that local government which the Tudors have 
made the characteristic of later British history, and 
which has given Wales self-government. 

The work of the officials of the time is shown by 
the account that tradition has kept, with a vividness 
as if it had been an event of yesterday, of the death 
of Baron Owen in the autumn of 1555. Baron Owen 
lived at Dolgellau ; he was one of the barons of the 
Carnarvon exchequer, sheriff of Merioneth, and one 
of the first representatives of his county in Parlia- 
ment. The lordship of Mawdd wy, whose romantic 
valley had just been added to Merioneth, is separated 
from Dolgellau by a bleak moorland. The old lord- 
ship contained a community of red-haired brigands, 
who had been the terror of the country, and Baron 
Owen determined to extirpate them. On a Christ- 
mas eve he and John Wynn, of Gwydir, surprised 
them, and put eighty of them to death. An old 
woman pleaded hard for the life of her youngest son 
and when the pitiless sheriff said that he must hang 
with the rest, she bared her yellow breasts and said, 
" These have given suck to those that will wash their 
hands in thy life's blood." When Baron Owen was 
returning from the sessions at Welshpool, his way led 
past the scene of the slaughter of the brigands. As 
he neared their home, a tree fell across the road 



THE RED BRIGANDS OF MAWDDWY 335 

before him, and the maddened brigands rushed upon 
him and his retinue to avenge their kinsmen's blood. 
Two of them actually washed their hands in his 
heart's blood. The deed sent such a thrill of horror 
through the country, however, that the brigands 
dispersed, and lovely Mawddwy knew them no more. 

It would be easy to multiply instances of the law- 
lessness of shire and march ; the most striking col- 
lection oi all being that of Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, 
though it is probable that the peace of the new times 
made him exaggerate the turbulence of the old by 
contrast. 

James the First, who contemplated the union of 
England and Scotland, was told that the recent union 
of England and Wales had brought *' great peace, 
tranquillity, civility, and infinite good to the inhabi- 
tants of that country of Wales." It was true that the 
country was peaceful, and that the quarrels that were 
once speedily ended by the sword were now slowly 
and laboriously determined by an increasing host of 
lawyers. It was true that a country, once subjected 
to a conqueror, now had a share in government. The 
lord marcher and the brigand had given place to the 
justice of the peace and the elected petty official. 

But the Tudors had attempted more. To them 
the customs of Wales were sinister usages, its lan- 
guage a curse, and its national life a dead volcano of 
treason. They were not content with introducing 
the law of primogeniture, which completed the destruc- 
tion of the old social system. They had enacted, in 
the statute which united Wales with England, that 
all the sessions of justice were to be held in English, 



336 THE GREAT SESSIONS 

that all oaths were to be administered in English, and 
that '' henceforth no person or persons that use the 
Welsh speech or language shall have or enjoy any 
manner of office or fees within this realm of England, 
Wales, or other the king's dominion, upon pain of 
forfeiting the same office or fees unless he or they use 
and exercise the English speech or language." 

The judges rarely knew the country ; it was very 
rarely indeed that they knew its language. Of the 
two hundred judges of the Great Sessions of Wales, 
scarcely thirty knew the language which was the only 
language of the people in whose behalf they were 
appointed. Gerard, a broad-minded Englishman, 
who had served in Wales for twenty-two years, 
advised the ministers of Queen Elizabeth that it 
" were very convenient that one of the justices of 
assize did understand the Welsh tongue, for now the 
justice must use some interpreter, and therefore, many 
times, the evidence is told according to the mind 
of the interpreter, whereby the evidence is expounded 
contrary to the which is said by the examinate ; and 
so the judge giveth a wrong charge." This reason- 
able advice was lost on Tudors, Stuarts, and Hano- 
verians alike. It was rarely that a Welsh-speaking 
Herbert or Kenyon, a Richards or a Lloyd, a Jenkins 
or a Gwynne, became judge ; and the law remained 
to the people partly the will of a conqueror, partly a 
mysterious mass of chicanery by which the simple 
peasant could be tricked out of what was justly his. 
While English was the language of the courts, the 
wardens of the country parishes often kept their 
vestry books in Welsh, as the clerks of parish 



AN UNFORTUNATE DIVISION 337 

councils do in this twentieth century. When a 
Welshman was hanged, his fate was duly entered in 
the English language ; when a wild cat or a fox fell 
a prey to country justice, its end was recorded in the 
vestry book in Welsh. 

The upper class obeyed the Tudors, and became 
English in thought and language. The lower classes 
remained sturdily Welsh. A cleavage was made 
between them. One man, profiting by his knowledge 
of English and of the law, obtained possession of 
land which, according to Welsh custom, ought to 
have belonged to many. The introduction of primo- 
geniture brought with it a family pride that hungered 
for land. The enhanced price of wool and corn 
brought wealth to the landowner ; the increase in the 
number of applicants for farms, caused by increase of 
population and consolidation of holdings, sent rents 
up. Economic causes had been working in favour of 
the villein for centuries ; now, having made him free, 
they kept him poor. To him that had was given in 
those days, and from him that had not was taken 
away. 




23 



XXII 



AN UNWELCOME REFORMATION 



The history of modern Wales is the history of the 
rise of a subject class to prosperity and to political 
power. They were in serfdom during the period of 
the princes ; they prospered, so quietly that the 
gradual amelioration of their lot was not noticed, 
while the social system of which they formed part 
was crumbling ; the freemen of old were hurled igno- 
miniously into their ranks by mediaeval lawyer and 
New Monarchy official ; out of the tempest of war 
in which prince and poet were lost, they emerged 
free. They had little else than their freedom. Their 
rights to the land ha|l gone, or were rapidly going.. 
They had no literature ; the mediaeval ode had 
become a string of stereotyped alliterations ; and when 
the richer class took to reading English or to reading 
nothing, Welsh literature died away. They had very 
little hope, they were thick on the. land ; their wealth 
lay in superstition and in the happiness of aimless 
indolence. Now, after three centuries, they are 
among the wealthiest and most industrious, and 

339 



340 AN UNWELCOME REFORMATION 

among the best educated and most thoughtful 
peasantry in the world. It is interesting to trace 
the history of their development ; it is still more 
interesting to see it mirrored in their literature. 

They opposed every revolution that helped to make 
men free. They opposed the Reformation, they 
opposed the Puritan Revolution, they opposed the 
French Revolution, and every movement connected 
with them. But each revolution left among them a 
thought or a book, the legacy of one of their own 
number whose message during his lifetime had been 
like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, which, 
sooner or later, profoundly affected their life. 

The opposition to the Reformation in Wales did 
not take the form of active rebellion, though rebellion 
was feared. The popularity of the Tudor king made 
the Welsh tolerate a movement they did not under- 
stand, and stand sullenly by while their monasteries 
were rifled and their relics cast in indignity out of 
their churches. Thomas Cromwell's Reformation 
policy was represented in Wales by men that had 
their master's energy, but whose unscrupulous methods 
and grasping avarice could not open the eyes of an 
unwilling people to the moral grandeur of a great 
religious reformation. 

Bishop Barlow was to carry the Reformation policy 
of Cromwell out in St. David's diocese. His life is 
not an attractive one. He had become a Protestant 
too soon, and he grovelled before Henry VHI. in 
declaring his contrition for having swerved from the 
truth, " by the fiend's instigation and false per- 
suasions," and to have erred " against the blessed 



BISHOP BARLOW AT ST. DAVIDS 34 1 

sacrament of the altar, disallowing the mass and 
denying purgatory, and outrageous railing against 
the clergy." But when he found that the king was 
won, " considering that where Rome, with all her 
Popish pageants (God be praised !) through the king's 
most prudent provision is exiled forth of England 
the unfeigned fidelity of mine allegiance enforceth 
me to wish all memorial monuments of her Popery 
in like manner to be banished out of Wales." 

He did his best to ruin St. David's. The relics, in- 
cluding a "worm-eaten book, covered with silver 
plate," he sent to Cromwell. He worked hard to 
substitute Carmarthen for St. David's as the bishop's 
see, because of the innumerable associations of the 
latter place with the past. The power of St. David 
in Wales rose, he says, like the power of the Pope in 
Europe. He doubts, not only whether the saintly 
holiness of St. David was above suspicion, but 
even whether he ever existed at all ; he might be 
something like Dervel Gadarn or Conoch, or such 
other Welsh gods, " antique gargles of ydolatry." It 
was useless to spend money, he thought, on ruinous 
buildings, " to nourish clattering conventicles of bar- 
barous rural persons." He condemned St. David's 
in one letter because it was " in such a desolate 
angle, and in so rare a frequented place, except of 
vagabond pilgrims." In another he says that between 
three and four hundred people listened to a super- 
stitious sermon. He thinks that the king will favour 
Carmarthen because it contained the grave of his 
grandfather, Edmund Tudor. " Moreover I might 
there, and God willing so I should, settle my con- 



342 AN UNWELCOME REFORMATION 

tinual consistory, assisted with learned persons, nnain- 
taining a free grammar school, with a daily lecture of 
holy Scripture, whereby God's honour principally 
preferred, Welsh rudeness decreasing. Christian 
civility may be introduced, to the famous renown of 
the king's supremacy." 

While clamouring for more opportunities to raise 
the morals and to purify the religion of the people 
upon whom he had been thrust, this reformer robbed 
the Church in order to enrich himself and his 
relatives. He unroofed the palace at St. David's, 
beautiful still in its ruins, in order, it was said, to 
provide with a dowry some of his five daughters, 
who were all married to bishops. He also alienated 
the rich manor of Lamphey to his godson. It is 
certain that the Reformation did not gain much from 
being associated with Bishop Barlow, his unsteadiness 
in the cause of religion contrasted so glaringly with 
the steadiness of his pursuit of the earthly spoils of 
the Church. 

Richard Devereux, bishop of Dover, travelled 
through the length and breadth of Wales, to destroy 
relics. His cold, hard nature, in spite of his vulgarity 
and insolence, is less hateful than the unctuous 
hypocrisy of Barlow. After a journey along the 
length of the country, he writes to Cromwell from 
Hereford that he has a collection of relics too 
cumbrous to send. While "bringing his purpose to 
pass " on the Grey Friars at Hereford, he describes 
what he found among the Black Friars at Bangor : 
" But the holiest relic in all North Wales I send 
to you here. There may no man kiss that but 



THE FATE OF THE RELICS 343 

he must kneel so soon as he see it, though it were in 
the foulest place in all the country ; and he must kiss 
every stone, for in each is great pardon. After that 
he hath kissed it, he must pay a meet of corn, or a 
cheese of a groat, or 4d. for it. It was worth to the 
friars in Bangor, with another image, the which I 
have also closed up, twenty marks a year in corn, 
cheese, cattle, and money." 

The Welsh agents of Cromwell were better, per- 
haps. A certain Price from the bleak highlands which 
look down on Betws y Coed, had been cross-bearer 
to Cardinal Wolsey. When Strata Marcella was 
dissolved, he obtained possession of the lands of the 
monastery in the upper districts of the Dee. His 
son-in-law, William Salesbury, translated the New 
Testament into Welsh ; his son, Ellis Price, known to 
the Welsh as the "red doctor" from his D.C.L. 
gown, represented the Protestant Reformation in 
North Wales. 

The good-humoured contempt with which Ellis 
Price regarded enthusiasm for the old or the new 
religion, the levity which hid much kindness, and 
the moderation which contrasts favourably with the 
brutal ruthlessness of some of the other assents of 
Cromwell, make him a little better than those who 
said they desired the reform of the Church, and 
showed that they hungered for its wealth. It was 
his task to take possession of one of the most 
famous of Welsh mediaeval idols. 

Writing to Cromwell as commissary-general of St. 
Asaph, he says that he was doing " my diligence and 
duty for the expulsing and taking away of certain 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES 345 

abusions, superstitions, and hypocrisies used within 
the said diocese." There was one relic however, 
for deahng with which Price wanted special instruc- 
tions. At Llanddervel, in the valley of the Dee, a 
little higher up than Glendower's house, there was a 
huge image of Dervel Gadarn, in armour, " in whom 
the people have so great confidence, hope, and trust, 
that they come daily on pilgrimage unto him, some 
with kine, others with oxen or horses, and the rest 
with money, insomuch that there were five or six 
hundred pilgrims, to a man's estimation, that offered 
to the said image the fifth day of the present month 
of April. The innocent people have been sore 
abused and enticed to worship the said image, inso- 
much that there is a common saying as yet amongst 
them that whosoever will offer anything to the said 
image of Dervel Gadarn, he hath power to fetch him 
or them out of hell when they be damned." 

There was a prophecy in Wales that " Dervel the 
Mighty" would set a whole forest on fire. The image 
was carried to London, and was used as part of the 
fire which burnt the friar Forest for denying the king's 
supremacy over the Church. 

Sometimes one sympathises with the reformers, 
sometimes with the relics they destroyed. It is a 
relief to turn from both to the Welsh bishop who 
suffered much in translating the Welsh Bible, to the 
young Nonconformist who gave his life for the new 
religion, and to the Jesuit priest who gave his life for 
the old. 

The dissolution of the monasteries was followed by 
a scramble among the Welsh gentry for Church 



346 AN UNWELCOME REFORMATION 

property. The Church was pillaged and brought to 
extreme poverty by the Welsh landowner and the 
English bishop alike. Tithes were alienated to lay- 
men in every direction, manors were given to bishops' 
relatives or sold for a mere song. With the exception 
of the poorer monasteries of Cwm Hir, Cymer, and 
Ystrad Marchell, all the Welsh Cistercian monasteries 
had a revenue just under i^200. So they were con- 
fiscated with the lesser English monasteries. The 
ruins of some of them are still owned by the 
descendants of those to whom their sites were 
granted ; an occasional relic, like the healing cup of 
Nanteos, escaped the destroying zeal of the reformer. 
Silence fell upon them all — Tintern, founded by a 
Clare ; Whitland and Strata Florida, founded by 
princes of the Deheubarth ; Ystrad Marchell, founded 
by Owen Cyveiliog ; Aberconway, founded by 
Llyvvelyn the Great ; Valle Crucis and Basingwerk, 
Margam and Neath, founded by the piety of Welsh 
chief or Norman baron. In the pillaged, poverty- 
stricken church, the clergy were poor and super- 
stitious as their flocks ; they had charge of too many 
parishes, they were badly educated, their lives were 
not above reproach. The wealth which might have 
given them culture had passed to the squire upholders 
of the Reformation, and to the relatives of reforming 
bishops. The religious convictions which might have 
made them a power among their people, in spite of 
their poverty, and almost in spite of their ignorance, 
had not yet come. 

Mute, suffering Wales — apathetic while the world 
around was awakening to a brighter morning, 



JOHN PENRY 347 

suspected by rulers who thought that its very 
patriotism was tinged with still smouldering rebellion, 
betrayed by the reformers whose selfishness and 
insolence had brought the spirit of the Reformation 
in a degraded form to its mountains — found burning 
utterance in the half-pleading, half-defying, addresses 
of John Penry to Elizabeth and her ministers. Penry 
had left his father's sheep on the high, green slopes of 
Mynydd Epynt, which rises between the valley of the 
Towy and the valley of the Wye, to seek learning at 
Oxford and Cambridge that would enable him to 
enter the Church. When he first came to Cambridge 
he retained his love for the old religion, and stole 
away to a midnight celebration of mass. But when 
he once saw the meaning of the Reformation, he 
threw himself into the movement with the whole 
fervour of his blindly passionate nature. He saw 
the power of the Press, and determined to use it to 
awaken Wales, and to interest the queen and Parlia- 
ment on behalf of his countrymen. In eloquent 
appeals, he describes the condition of Wales — its 
unsympathetic and self-seeking bishops, its ignorant 
and unworthy clergy, its lack of preaching and 
education. He appeals to the patriotism of Parlia- 
ment. The God who had become the God of 
England was knocking at the door of Parliament 
through him, Penry said, and demanding that Wales 
should be made part of His inheritance. He called 
upon the president of the Court of Wales, as he 
should answer before God in the day of last judgment, 
to remove the evils which made religious worship a 
farce. The fate of such appeals, made to lovers of 



348 AN UNWELCOME REFORMATION 

order like Elizabeth and Cecil and Whitgift, was not 
uncertain. Penry, when he saw that preaching in 
Welsh would not be provided, and that the Reforma- 
tion must take its slow course while souls were being 
lost, defied Whitgift and the High Commission. He 
drifted further and further from the Elizabethan 
policy, and made interesting discoveries — that 
political unity does not presuppose unity of religion, 
and that a clergy can exist by the voluntary offerings 
of those whom they serve. It was he who gave his 
co-religionists a hint that they could get, in another 
land, the freedom of worship denied them in their own 
country. In May, 1593, Penry, still a young man of 
thirty-four, was hurried to a traitor's death, pleading 
to the last that he might preach the gospel in Wales. 
In one of his appeals, Penry refers gladly to a 
rumour that the Bible would soon be given to Wales 
in its own language. Another Welshman was work- 
ing in the solitude of Llanrhaiadr, a secluded village 
nestling in one of the romantic ravines which skirt 
the eastern slopes of the Berwyn. William Morgan, 
in spite of difficulties which were almost as great, 
though not so apparent as those of Penry, was 
engaged in translating the Bible into Welsh. Versions 
of parts of it had already been published, but the 
Welsh was so uncouth that they could never have 
become popular. Morgan represents, at its best, the 
prose which always comes at the end of a golden 
period of poetry. His style is natural and clear, 
and contains an echo of the departing music of the 
dying literature of the previous century. The new 
Bible was, in parts, a re-construction of the earlier 



WILLIAM MORGAN 349 

versions of William Salesbury, and Thomas Huet, and 
Bishop Richard Davies, and it was revised by Bishop 
Parry, when the new edition, still the authorised 
edition, was published in 1620. But it is substantially 
William Morgan's work ; and since its publication in 
1588, its influence over the life and thought of every 
successive generation has increased until this day. 

William Morgan was the son of a tenant who lived 
in one of the glens of the Conway, on the estate of 
Sir John Wynn of Gwydir. His devotion to his great 
task of translating the Bible at Llanrhaiadr, and his 
fearless championship of the Church against its 
spoilers as bishop of St. Asaph, contrasts forcibly 
with the apathy of the mass of the clergy and with 
the selfishness of many of the bishops of his day. 

Morgan had to contend against those who believed 
that a Welsh Bible would perpetuate the Welsh 
language and the isolation of Welsh thought. The 
strong Protestantism of the middle part of Elizabeth's 
reign had partly overcome this opposition. Whitgift, 
the final representative of Elizabeth's policy, had 
condemned Penry, but made it possible for Morgan to 
give Wales a Bible. 

The education of Wales had not been entirely 
neglected. An attempt was made in the reigns of 
Henry VHI. and Edward VI. to save some small 
portion from the wreck of the Church for education. 
By the end of the reign of Elizabeth, schools had 
been established or re-organised at Brecon, Aber- 
gavenny, Bangor, Cowbridge, Presteign, Carmarthen, 
and Ruthin. They were, at first, to establish godly 
learning and virtue, and to destroy everything Welsh 



350 AN UNWELCOME REFORMATION 

But in the last school founded, the Ruthin School, 
founded by Dean Goodman in 1595, it was necessary 
that the master should be able to preach and teach in 
Welsh. A new power had appeared in the country, 
and the Tudor ministers saw that, unless they 
appealed to Welsh sentiment in the Welsh language 
in order to further the Reformation movement in 
Wales, the Jesuits would appeal to the longing for the 
old worship that was dying so hard in the mountains. 
In 1583 the Jesuit John Bennett was tortured at 
Hawarden. He was a native of Flintshire and was 
educated at Douay. He came back to wander through 
North Wales, to strengthen the wavering faith of his 
countrymen, especially in the district of the famous 
well of St. Winifred, the praises of which had been 
sung by lolo and Tudur Aled. He was caught and 
sent to Bishop Hughes of St. Asaph, who tried in 
vain to get him to change his religion. We are told 
that the worldly bishop took from him the relics he 
wore, and wore them secretly himself When the 
judge ordered him to raise his right hand at Holy- 
well, he raised both, and said in Welsh — " Behold 
my two hands against all the heretics of England." 
After laying ghosts on his way, he was taken to 
Ludlow. While he was on the rack, a Protestant 
clergyman carried on an argument with him ; Bennett 
demanded, in order that the argument might be a 
fair one, that the clergyman should be put on another 
rack. He was exiled, and was not to return on pain 
of a horrible death. Back he came, and his work 
among the poor made the people of North Wales 
regard him as a saint. When the plague came to 



ROBERT JONES 



351 



London in 1625, he went to nurse the sufferers, an 
old man of eighty-five. He caught the plague, and 
died. 

In 1595, Robert Jones, a far abler man, came to 
Raglan, and made it the centre of very active and 
successful Jesuit work. In 1609, he directed the 




GATEWAY OF EPISCOPAL PALACE, LLANDAFF. 

{From a drawing by A. Salvin.) 

whole mission in Britain. Wales was a separate 
province, divided into two colleges ; and, next to 
London, it was here that the activity of the Jesuits 
was greatest. From the storm of persecution which 
broke upon them after the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, 
to the still fiercer one which followed the " Popish 



352 



AN UNWELCOME REFORMATION 



Plot" of 1679, Welsh Jesuits, educated at Rome, or 
St. Omer, or Valladolid, came back to Wales, and, 
while hunted from place to place with the sword 
hanging over their heads, they stole out in the dead 
of night to celebrate mass or to strengthen the 
faith of their converts. Their learning, their self- 
sacrificing zeal, their real philanthropy, won the regard 
of the people among whom they laboured ; but the 
steady merciless persecution, which sent Philip Evans 
to the gallows and the hangman's knife at Cardiff and 
David Lewis at Usk, exterminated the mission upon 
which so many devoted lives had been spent. 

The Jesuits had come too late. It was too late to 
arouse a national opposition to a Reformation which 
was a purely English movement. Wales had shared 
too fully the boundless hopes and adventurous spirit 
of England during that glorious Elizabethan period 
to welcome any appeal to a sense of the indepen- 
dence that had gone. Men like Roger Williams and 
Thomas Morgan were captivated by the struggles for 
freedom which followed the Reformation in many 
lands. The gilt armour of Thomas Morgan of 
Pencarn, in Glamorgan, was well known on the 
marshy fliats of the Low Countries, for he led the first 
host of Englishmen to help William the Silent, in that 
home of European liberty. Not less known was the 
great plume of feathers rising from the gilt morion of 
Roger Williams in the thick of many a hard-fought 
battle. Roger Williams was of Penrhos, in Mon- 
mouthshire. He had been a companion to Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert. Though hot-tempered and impul- 
sive, his wisdom was declared by Leicester and Henry 



ROGER WILLIAMS 353 

the Fourth of France to be equal to his valour. 
He fought for the Dutch in the Low Countries, he 
fought shoulder to shoulder with Breton Huguenots 
in France. He commanded the cavalry that was to 
oppose the Spaniards landed by the Armada ; when 
he found that his services would not be needed in 
England, he led four hundred Britons to fight for 
Henry of Navarre. It was abroad, not at home, that 
Welsh blood was shed for the Reformation. 




24 



XXIII 



BLIND LOYALTY 



Wales had its full share of the unity caused by 
the patriotism of Tudor times ; it had its full share 
also in the disruption caused by the struggle between 
political ideals in Stuart times. It was almost entirely 
Royalist. It was in the English parts only, especially 
in southern Pembrokeshire, that the Parliament had 
partisans. 

From the king's march on Edgehill in 1624, with 
an army largely Welsh, to the capture of Harlech 
in 1647, the last castle to hold out for the king 
in the First Civil War, Wales was enthusiastically 
Royalist. The feeling of sheer, blind, unreasoning 
loyalty was strong among Welsh squires like Sir 
John Owen of Clenenau. The more thoughtful and 
moderate men, like Archbishop Williams, though they 
had been strongly opposed to the absolutism which 
had found exponents in the favourites of the first two 
Stuart kings, yet threw themselves entirely to the 
king's side. 

The people followed the example of the gentry 
354 



THE GREAT CIVIL IVAR 355 

in everything. The Tudor laws had placed them 
more than ever in the power of the great landowners. 
They had no traditional reverence for the privileges 
of Parliament. To them the Puritan Revolution was 
but an extreme form of the Protestant Reformation 
that had been thrust upon them. A real war caused 
a flutter of excitement among them, and aroused their 
dormant loyalty. The personality of Charles I. and 
the new palace built by Laud at Abergwili appealed 
to them ; but they cared nothing for Pym's con- 
stitutional theories, or for Milton's belief in the 
independence of the individual mind. 

It seemed at first as if the whole policy of Charles 
the First was to be shaped by a Welshman ; but, to 
the misfortune of England, this was not to be. Lord 
Keeper Williams was probably the only man who 
could have averted civil war. His strong common 
sense kept him straight when others were lured by 
ideals into a mistaken foreign policy, or were blinded 
by passions which precipitated civil strife. His 
hatred of dogmatism made him oppose Laud's inter- 
ference with ceremonies as well as the extreme 
Puritan's interference with freedom of thought. He 
was not blind to the beauty of worship for which 
Laud longed ; he panelled the Jerusalem Chamber 
with cedar, and the fellows and undergraduates of 
Lincoln College, Oxford, still commemorate his 
munificence in building their chapel, " the beautiful 
house " with prophets and apostles in the fine glass of 
its windows. He objected to the illegal interference of 
the king with Parliament or with the liberty of the 
subject, as well as to the unconstitutional demands 




JOHN WILLIAMS. 

{Frojn the p07- trait at Lincoln College, Oxford, by permission of the 
Rector and Fello^vs.) 



356 



JOHN WILLIAMS 357 

of the Parliament. He opposed the degradation of 
the power of the crown by Buckingham, and he also 
condemned the armed resistance which Buckin«:ham 
aroused against his unfortunate king. Kind-hearted 
and conciliatory, he saw good in his opponents ; 
straightforward and conscientious, with the exception 
of one lamentable lapse, he knew well how to yield. 
He was quick to discover possibilities, and daring 
when occasion required. He knew men : he was 
among the first to estimate the political influence of 
Eliot rightly and to recognise the military genius of 
Oliver Cromwell. At the beginning of the strife, he 
showed that the path of peace and of gradual 
development of liberty was still open. 

Born at Conway in 1582, educated at Ruthin, 
he followed Bacon as Lord Keeper. He preached 
the funeral sermon of James I., showing that Eliza- 
beth had been the loadstar of his policy, and pointing 
to Charles as the '' living statue " of the British 
Solomon. Charles the First, after making his first 
speech to his Parliament in 1625, entrusted further 
explanations to Williams. But his criticisms were 
too candid and too wise to please the king and 
Buckingham. " With Lord Keeper Williams," says 
the English historian of the period, '' worldly wisdom 
departed from the councils of Charles." Had 
Williams been allowed to guide the policy of the 
king, the history of the seventeenth century would 
have been more prosaic, but England would have 
been far happier. 

The Welsh members of the Long Parliament were 
nearly all Royalists. William Herbert (Cardiff), was 



THE WAR IN SOUTH WALES 363 

" with his patience, industry, and fooling," he ruined 
the king's cause in North Wales. The castles were 
not provided with garrisons, Oswestry was taken, so 
that the only communication with Worcester was 
" through more unhallowed countries than the Alps." 
Mennes complained that the archbishop of York 
interfered too much. Archbishop Williams, sadly 
out of his element in war, still respected by both 
sides, had fortified Conway for the king. He had 
long seen that the king's cause was hopeless. He 
found that the Parliamentary fleet prevented the 
landing of ammunition from Ireland in Anglesey, he 
failed to run the blockade of Liverpool, he saw 
Brereton overrunning the Wirral, and the Royalists 
running away shamefully before Middleton in Mont- 
gomeryshire. He quarrelled with Mennes ; but still 
tried to make Conway the stronghold of those who 
wished to remove their treasure from the way of the 
invading Parliamentarians. After the battle of Mar- 
ston Moor, where the Scots joined the Parliamen- 
tarians, the Royalists retreated towards Wales in a 
disorderly host. Michael Jones, driving the Northern 
horse before him into Wales, so scattered them that 
" it will be no power but that of the last trump to 
call them together again." But the Scots did not 
come, and Montrose's success in Scotland gave the 
Royalists new life. 

In May, 1645, the bells of Bristol pealed merrily 
and bonfires blazed to commemorate the success of 
the king's forces in Wales. Gerard, with a powerful 
army, had taken Haverfordwest, and had compelled 
his opponents to burn Cardigan and " to run away 



364 BLIND LOYALTY 

by the light of their own fire ; " he had routed the 
Pembrokeshire ParHamentarians, had taken Picton 
and Carew castles — all the castles of the country 
except Tenby and Pembroke. But the Royalists 
became very anxious when they thought of be- 
leaguered Chester, the vulnerable heel of Achilles in 
Wales. Gerard's army was to relieve it as soon as it 
had finished its work in South Wales. Montgomery, 
which commanded Gerard's way to Chester, had 
declared for the king, and Sir William Vaughan was 
sent to take it. "If this succeed," wrote an enthu- 
siastic soldier, "the king's condition is very happy, 
for hereby all Wales, which is the nursery of the 
king's infantry, will be again entirely in the king's 
obedience, except those crow's nests in Pembroke- 
shire." 

In June news came of the crushing defeat of the 
king at Naseby. His army had been met by the 
New Model army, and the fate of the war in England 
had been decided in a pitched battle. Deserted by 
their cavalry, the Royalist infantry, mostly Welsh, 
were overwhelmed by the Parliamentary horse. 
After that decisive defeat, the king could only act on 
the defensive and prolong a hopeless resistance in 
the west. 

Determined and still undaunted, the king rode 
away from the lost field. He came to Wales to get 
another army. In July he met the Monmouthshire 
squires at Usk. They promised to enlist the whole 
population of the county for defence, and nearly a 
thousand for service elsewhere. At Cardiff between 
three and four thousand men of Glamorgan met him. 



DISCONTENT AND DEFEAT 365 

But the king was dismayed when, while he sat 
silently, Gerard and the Welsh gentlemen began to 
recriminate each other. The Welshmen wanted to 
serve under their own leaders, and to prevent the 
royal forces from plundering districts loyal to the 
king. A mistake had been made which was alien- 
ating Wales from the king. Professional soldiers, 
often overbearing and insolent, had been placed over 
them, chilling their enthusiasm and entailing great 
suffering on their country. In North Wales the 
professional English soldiers had found that the 
people " love not a stranger longer than he can tell 
them news." South Wales was full of discontent. 
The king tried to remedy the evil. He dismissed 
Gerard, and appointed Astley to command in South 
Wales. But Rupert and Gerard were too well 
remembered. The mischief had been done. 

The Parliamentary party was wiser ; and the 
success of Laugharne, of which the king soon heard, 
justified their policy. Sad at heart, Charles left 
Wales in August. In the next month the Scots 
retreated, and he was able to move southward again. 
The New Model army was besieging Bristol. They 
suddenly found themselves in great danger. The 
king was approaching, and they might find them- 
selves besieged in turn. They got out of all difficulty 
by the midnight storming of Bristol. They scaled 
the walls, Hugh Peters and his Bible among the 
foremost, and gave little quarter to the Welshmen 
who tried to defend the ramparts of the extensive 
fortifications. 

The fall of Bristol made Chester the only point of 



PRESBYTERIAN AND INDEPENDENT '}^6'J 

connection with Ireland. From Raglan the king 
sped back, through Presteign and Chirk, to relieve it, 
escaping from Poyntz by a night march. From its 
walls, he saw a sortie hurled back by the besiegers, 
while his cavalry was dashed to pieces by Poyntz's 
horse within sight at Rowton Heath. On the Welsh 
side of the Dee the king reorganised his shattered 
forces, sent five hundred Welshmen to defend the 
battered walls of Chester to the death, and made 
Denbigh his headquarters. The news of the fall of 
Montrose at Philiphaugh destroyed the king's last 
plans. In October little energetic Morgan captured 
Chepstow and Monmouth for Parliament, and Laug- 
harne overran the whole of South Wales from Pem- 
broke. Archbishop Williams made his peace with 
Middleton. All hopes of help that Glamorgan could 
send from Ireland were destroyed by the fall of 
Chester in February, 1646. With the surrender of 
Harlech to Mytton in March, 1647, the First Civil 
War came to an end. 

A difference of opinion, which had been gradually 
growing among the Parliamentary party during the 
excitement of the war, became a great practical 
difficulty in the hour of victory. The Presbyterian 
wished to substitute a better religious unity for the 
old one ; to him the granting of freedom of con- 
science or the liberty of the Press would be to allow 
Satan to walk about, seeking whom he might devour. 
The Independent objected to the domination of 
priest and presbyter alike, and demanded indepen- 
dence for the congregation and toleration for the 
individual conscience. The Presbyterian had Parlia- 



368 BLIND LOYALTY 

ment on his side, the Independent the army. The 
principles of the Independents had already found a 
voice in John Milton ; when Cromwell decided to 
lead them, their victory was assured. 

The triumph of the Independent was regarded in 
Wales, as in Scotland, with fear. Middleton wished 
to give the Welsh another version of the Bible, 
Laugharne wished to extend the Presbyterianism of 
Pembroke over South Wales. When Poyer sallied 
from Pembroke Castle in March, 1648, and drove the 
Parliamentary army from the town, the fire of 
rebellion, now assuming a national character, spread 
through Wales with amazing rapidity and the Second 
Civil War began. The siege of Pembroke is the 
great central event of the new war. 

The New Model Army divided into two. One 
division, under Fairfax, chased the English rebels 
from Kent across the Thames and besieged them in 
Colchester. The other division marched towards 
South Wales. When Horton came to Neath to 
disband Laugharne's regiments, he found that they 
were rapidly melting away and joining Poyer. At 
the beginning of May, though he was able to defeat 
Laugharne at St. Pagans, near Cardiff, he had to 
face a determined rebellion into which smouldering 
discontent had now blazed. 

A {q.vs[ days afterwards Cromwell appeared at 
Chepstow. The town was taken, but the castle was 
held by Sir Nicholas Kemeys, who had represented 
Monmouth in the Parliament of 1628, a man of 
gigantic stature and heroic courage. Leaving Ewer 
to attack the castle — in the defence of which Kemeys 



THE SIEGE OF PEMBROKE 369 

died sword in hand — Cromwell pushed on to Glamor- 
gan. Within less than a fortnight he had driven 
Laugharne, Poyer, and Powel into Pembroke. From 
the strongly defended town they defied him. He 
had no artillery ; the ship which carried his siege 
guns had been driven ashore by a storm, and the 
guns had sunk into the sand. 

The fortunes of England depended upon the 
length of the siege of Pembroke. The army was 
engaged in besieging Colchester and Pembroke, with 
the breadth of England between them. The Parlia- 
ment was trying to come to terms with the king 
before Cromwell came back. The Scotch army w^as 
marching on London, and Cromwell could only spare 
Lambert and his cavalry to hang on their flank and 
impede their march. Could Pembroke hold out until 
king and Parliament had agreed, and until the Scotch 
had reached London ? 

Throughout June Poyer and Laugharne held out. 
But negotiations and the Scotch moved slowly. On 
the fourteenth of the month Cromwell wrote to 
Lenthall : " They begin to be in extreme want of 
provision, so as in all probability they cannot live a 
fortnight without being starved." He had heard 
that the men had mutinied and had said about their 
officers, " Better it were we should throw them over 
the walls." At the end of a month he knew Pem- 
broke better. " Here is," he wrote to Fairfax, " a very 
desperate enemy, who, being put out of all hope of 
mercy, are resolved to endure to the uttermost ex- 
tremity, being very many of them gentlemen of 
quality and men thoroughly resolved." The guns 

25 



THE FALL OF PEMBROKE 37 1 

brought from a ship lying at Haverfordwest by Hugh 
Peters — still following sieges, Bible in hand — were 
too feeble. The scaling-ladders were too short. 
The garrison made desperate sallies. The country 
around was seething with discontent. Cromwell 
remembered that Sir Trevor Williams, of doubtful 
fidelity, had a house near Usk, in his rear, " well 
stocked with arms, and very strong " ; that Williams 
was a man " full of craft and subtlety, very bold, and 
resolute." He was arrested, however, without any 
difficulty. Cromwell sent driblets of cavalry north- 
wards to join Lambert ; and the burning of Royalist 
houses is still vivid in local traditions and in angry 
song. But he dared not send many ; " the country, 
since we sat down before this place, have made two 
or three insurrections, and are ready to do it every 
day." 

At the beginning of July, Cromwell's great guns 
began to play on the walls of Pembroke. On the 
eleventh, battered and famished, it surrendered. 
Seventeen of the officers had been on the king's 
side in the First Civil War ; they went into exile. 
Three — Laugharne, Powel, and Poyer — had been on 
the side of Parliament, and Cromwell, after the weary 
and anxious siege, meant that they should die. 
" The persons excepted," he wrote to the Speaker of 
the House of Commons, " are such as have formerly 
served you in a very good cause ; but, being now 
apostatised, I did rather make election of them than 
of those who had always been for the king, judging 
their iniquity double ; because they have sinned 
against so much light, and against so many evidences 



372 BLIND LOYALTY 

of Divine Providence going along with and prosper- 
ing a just Cause, in the management of which they 
themselves had a share." 

The Parliament determined, however, that one 
only should die. Poyer had been the soul of the 
revolt at first, and it was he who had kept up the 
flagging spirit of the garrison during the weary 
watching and the gnawing famine of the long siege. 
But it was left to fate to decide which of the three 
was to die. Three slips of paper were prepared ; on 
two was written, " God giveth life," the third was 
blank. A child drew the lots ; and the blank paper 
was drawn for Poyer. 

Wales had been overwhelmed in its attempt to 
prevent the English army from determining the fate 
of principles and nations. It was to be the turn of 
Scotland next. Cromwell hurried northwards, and 
the disaster of Preston drove the Scots back, a beaten 
and a broken remnant, to the impossible task of 
defending their own country. 

The First Civil War had bound the three countries- 
England, Scotland, and Wales — together in a struggle, 
which divided each of them, for or against political 
principles. The Second Civil War had become a 
war of the smaller nations against the dominant 
English army. When the Commonwealth was 
established, it owed nothing to Wales. Laugharne 
had nearly wrecked the cause for which he once 
won South Wales ; Middleton had sulked in 
Chirk Castle while the tide of war, in spite of 
Lambert's gallant fight against overwhelming odds, 
had been rolling nearer North Wales. So their 



WALES AND THE PURITAN 3/3 

country was looked upon as the home of disaffection 
and superstition. 

During the war the spirit of the Puritan Revolu- 
tion had appealed strongly to a few Welshmen. 
Morgan Lloyd's dreamy mysticism, in which the new 
revolutionary ideas were expressed by the help of 
Welsh proverbs that were welcome to every peasant, 
had already appealed to a chosen few. Some had 
fought for the Parliament. Two — John Jones, of 
Merioneth, and Thomas Wogan, of Cardigan — signed 
the king's death-warrant. But the typical Welsh- 
man, to Cromwell's mind, was the turbulent Sir John 
Owen, of Clenenau, who would gladly have raised a 
new rebellion for his king every day of his life ; or 
Judge Jenkins, who defied the House of Commons 
from its own bar, as a den of thieves, responding to 
its threat to hang him by saying that he would hang 
with the Bible under one arm and Magna Carta 
under the other. 







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XXIV 



THE RULE OF THE PURITAN AND THE WHIG 



In August, 1643, two men went to visit St. David's, 
then far removed from the Civil War which was 
raging in England and on the borders. They may 
be taken to represent the two spirits in conflict in 
the Great Civil War. One represented the belief in 
the beauty of the well-ordered worship which Laud, 
as bishop of St. David's, wished to introduce into 
Wales ; the other represented the burning desire to 
reform morals which characterised the Puritan party. 
One was Morgan Owen, the bishop of Llandaff, who 
built the porch which still stands before St. Mary's at 
Oxford, with an effigy of Mary and the infant Christ 
on the top of it, her head covered with an earthly 
coronet. He was descended from the doctors of 
Myddvai, whose skill in medicine had been inherited 
from a fairy ancestress who came from the Van lake 
to marry a mortal. He had been imprisoned by the 
Long Parliament, and had retired to his home, to die, 
it is said, of a broken heart. 

The other was Rees Prichard, of Llandovery, 
375 



376 THE RULE OF THE PURITAN AND THE WHIG 

known in every Welsh home to the present day as 
the "Old Vicar." Vicar Prichard, like the bishop, 
was a Royalist ; but it was the light of his " Welsh- 
men's Candle" that introduced the spirit of Puri- 
tanism into every corner of Wales. The good Old 
Vicar's stanzas were short ; he meant them, not for 
a book, but for the memory and the conscience of his 
people. They are homely and earnest ; they are full 
of English and colloquial words that every writer 
before him would have avoided ; there is no attempt 
at grace of diction, every canon of form and taste 
that had been evolved by the critics, the guardians of 
the refinement bequeathed by a long series of poets, 
were by him utterly disregarded. The highly artistic 
alliterative ode gave place to simple stanzas of the 
most primitive construction. 

But it was the beginning of a new literature, and 
of a new life. In it the sensuous beauty of the 
Laudian movement was to be united with the 
strong Puritanism of Prichard and the mysticism of 
Morgan Llwyd. It had found expression in George 
Herbert before the war, and was to find expression 
again in Henry Vaugnan when the war was over. 
But the new life was not to become the dominating 
life of Wales for a long day. The Puritan and the 
Whig were to rule. 

In the Agreement of the People, the voice of the 
victorious army in 1649, it was proposed to give 
Wales thirty-five out of four hundred representatives. 
Monmouth, Glamorgan, and Pembroke were to have 
four members each ; Montgomery, Cardigan, Car- 
marthen, and Brecknock three; Anglesea, Carnarvon, 



JOHN JONES 377 

Merioneth, Denbigh, and Radnor two ; FHnt one. 
In the Assembly of Nominees of 1653 Wales was 
represented by six members — Bussy Mansel, of 
Briton Ferry, who had fought for Parliament through- 
out the war, and who represented Cardiff later on ; 
Colonel James Phillips, of Tregibby, known on account 
of his activity in the redistribution of property and 
on account of the poems of his wife, the " matchless 
Orinda" ; John Williams, a captain of horse; Hugh 
Courtenay, very active on both sides of the Menai, 
but afterwards dangerous to the State ; Richard 
Price, of Montgomery, who had shown his zeal on 
battlefield and in seizing estates ; and John Brown, a 
Shropshire captain of dragoons. In the constitution 
formed by the Instrument of Government in 1653, 
Wales is given twenty-eight members out of four 
hundred. Monmouth had three, Merioneth one, and 
the other counties two each. Cardiff and Haverford- 
west had one member each. 

Wales can hardly be said to have been represented 
at all during the Commonwealth. It was led and 
ruled with a rod of iron. Its members of Parliament 
were generally strangers, some of them having risen 
from the ranks during the wars. Their ability and 
their energy were beyond question. The cha- 
racteristic charges brought against them were, not 
timidity or lack of ability to govern, but the exube- 
rance of masterful activity, even highway robbery. 
John Jones, of Merioneth, threw the whole strength 
of his life to what he regarded as the predestined 
regeneration of Wales, and laid his life down at the 
Restoration for the old cause. Sergeant Glyn, of 



3/8 THE RULE OF THE PURITAN AND THE WHIG 

Glyn Llivon, gave the Commonwealth the service 
of his long political training under Pym ; Colonel 
Thomas Madryn, to the disgust of the Welsh poets, 
associated with the new rule a descent from the 
princes of Wales. Philip Jones, of Llangyvelach, the 
representative of Glamorgan, united the two qualities 
that were most required in those stormy times — the 
energy of a successful soldier and the wisdom of a 
successful ruler. Algernon Sidney, who sat for 
Cardiff, represented the new republican theory in 
loyalist Wales. They introduced into Wales the 
political ideas of the Puritan Revolution, which were to 
take strange and evanescent forms in such uncongenial 
soil. At the Restoration some of them died on the 
scaffold, some lingered in prison, some returned to 
the humble duties of farmer or gardener. Some, like 
Glyn and Algernon Sidney, maintained their old 
theories against the new generation represented by 
Williams and Jeffreys. But, all through Common- 
wealth times, the instincts of a Celtic peasantry 
revolted against what they regarded as upstart 
English officials and renegade Welsh squires. That 
mysterious kingdom of Christ, the advent of which 
was hailed by Morgan Llwyd, had never been 
associated by them with the rule of an army of saints. 
The type of the Puritan ruler of Wales was not a 
Herbert or a Glyn, but Harrison. His enemies de- 
scribed him as the son of a Newcastle butcher, who 
preached that other saints should be content with 
wisdom and piety, while he himself loved gold and 
silver and worldly bravery. His strong, energetic 
nature showed to great advantage in difficulties and 



HARRISON AND MORGAN LLWVD 379 

adversity, and his imagination caught easily at that 
theocracy which was so perfect as an ideal and so 
impossible as a practical solution of Cromwell's 
difficulties. Harrison became commander-in-chief in 
South Wales in 1649, and in 1650 he was entrusted 
with others with the enforcing of the " Act for the 
better propagation and preaching of the Gospel in 
Wales." Around him there formed a little company 
of men who believed that God had given them power 
to enforce Puritanism on Wales. The energetic 
Vavasor Powel, the dreamy Morgan Llwyd, the 
soldier Hugh Prichard, helped to develop his 
political ideals, and regarded him as their strong 
right arm. Gradually Oliver Cromwell, guided by 
the strong common sense which showed England 
how much was possible, and Harrison, guided by 
the enthusiastic Welshmen who saw the kingdom 
of Christ near at hand, became unintelligible to each 
other. Cromwell was regarded by the Welsh Puritans 
almost as the type of earthly sovereignty, Harrison 
as the leader of the saints in the formation of a new 
state of heavenly birth. 

The joy with which the small number of Puritan 
visionaries in Wales hailed the triumph of the English 
army is echoed by Morgan Llwyd in rough-hewn 
English verses in the spring of 1648 : — 

"All English swans that are alive, 
And Scottish cuckoos sing, 
And some Welsh swallows chirp and chime 
To welcome pleasant spring. 

A spring in spring, 
Poor birds now sing ; 
Our head is high, 
Our summer nigh." 



380 THE RULE OF THE PURITAN AND THE WHIG 

Then came the task of Harrison and the Welsh 
saints. The squires and peasants rebelled against 
them, their own troops mutinied for earthly pay. 
Their brethren were tempted by worldly power and 
pomp and wealth. The mute ministers of religion 
they ejected were popular ; the zealous and unlearned 
ministers they substituted were often disappointing 
and untractable. The longed-for summer did not 
come gently ; it gradually dawned upon the Puri- 
tans' mind that a treacherous spring was giving place 
to an unnatural winter. The reign of Christ, so near 
in 1648, is hidden by a cloud of fantastic phantoms 
in 1654. Harrison's poet then sums up what had been 
done, and shows how vague the future was : — 

" The Long Old Parliament 

Plucked off an ancient crown ; 
And, prospering in that intent. 
Brought one Tyrannus down. 

The hot young Parliament 

Would pull all mountains down ; 
Christ being the Heir by right descent, 

Yet they got small renown. 

The third slow Parliament, 

They look about and frown, 
Not knowing well what any meant, 

Nor who shall wear the crown. 

But the Protector, he 

The first old House did scour, 
The second House he lets go free. 

And on this third doth lour. 

Ask now what shall be next, 

The folks have many minds ; 
Few can expound this knotty text. 

So various are these winds. 



A MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 38 1 

But this is very plain, 

All, all must shortly clown, 
Returning to their dust again ; 

And One shall wear the crown." 

The restoration of the king in 1660 caused great 
joy in Wales. The voices of the Puritans were 
silenced. The college projected by John Lewis of 
Aberystwyth and Richard Baxter was forgotten, the 
religious organisation laboriously formed by Vava- 
sor Powel crumbled into despised fragments. The 
great dreams of a new Wales disappeared, and the 
memories of them became the heritage of some 
family of peasant poets or of some tiny congrega- 
tion of persecuted religionists. The ordinary voice 
of Wales was heard again — the squire dispensed 
justice, the parson preached loyalty, the bard in 
remote Nannau praised the life of Charles the 
First and bewailed his death, and the peasant 
was told that the world was put right again. But 
if the energy of the Cavalier found a warped con- 
tinuation in the daring piracy of a Henry Morgan, 
the religious earnestness of the Puritan period was 
stored for other generations in Henry Vaughan's 
" Silex Scintillans," in Rees Prichard's " Welshmen's 
Candle," and in Morgan Llwyd's " Book of the Three 
Birds." 

In the struggle between Whig and Tory, which 
culminated in the Revolution of 1688, Wales took a 
prominent part. It was Tory. It furnished each 
party with some of its ablest leaders, and it gave 
England the service of a host of able lawyers. In 
the trial of Algernon Sidney by Jeffreys a Welsh 



3^3 

judge condemned a Welsh member of Parliament. 
Welsh lawyers were the most unscrupulous and the 
most able instruments of the tyranny of the restored 
Stuarts ; Welsh lawyers, on the other hand, helped to 
secure the independence of jurors and to draw up the 
Bill of Rights. 

Political feeling in Wales at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century can be seen from two books, which 
have to this day universal popularity in Welsh peasant 
homes. Ellis Wynn's " Visions of the Sleeping 
Bard" appeared in 1703, and the first edition of 
Theophilus Evans' " Mirror of the First Ages " in 
1716. 

Ellis Wynn gave the affrighted Welshmen so 
realistic a description of hell that it has haunted 
the imagination of the country ever since. Its 
scenery is Welsh — the scenery of that wild 
Merioneth mountains which rise in terraced grandeur 
above the home of Ellis Wynn, and of the regicide 
John Jones. Among its inhabitants are statesmen 
closely associated by Welsh peasants for a century 
with the evil one. Its gaping jaws had already 
received Oliver Cromwell ; they were hungering for 
Louis XIV. The grasping landlord and the indolent 
tenant, the unworthy minister and the seditious 
sectary, all that were condemned by the conscience 
of the time, find a place in the loathsome dungeons 
or on the hot, lurid precipices of the poet's hell. Ellis 
Wynn's heaven is less like Wales, and has not 
been found so interesting. The book helped to 
give Wales the politics of the moderate Tories of 



384 THE RULE OF THE PURITAN AND THE WHIG 

the reign of Queen Anne — that the queen main- 
tained right and the Church truth, that France 
ought to be feared, and that dissenters, especially 
Quakers and Independents, should be the care of 
the justice of the peace. 

Theophilus Evans, in a style that gradually 
attained the perfection of homely simplicity, told 
his countrymen their early history, how great they 
had been, how many lands they had governed, and 
how much they had lost The imagination of 
children by many a mountain hearth was fired by 
the visions they saw in the Mirror. The supine 
inaction of the first half of the eighteenth century 
was the seed time of many ideas. Meanwhile, two 
false reports took wing. One was the Welsh belief 
that the Englishman had the ingrained insolence of 
a guilty robber. The other was the English belief that 
Taffy was a Welshman, and that Taffy was a thief 

With the eighteenth century and the Hanoverians 
apathy fell upon the land. A few Welsh squires 
risked all for the Pretender, one suffered a traitor's 
death ; but the great mass were too cautious to 
embrace any more lost causes, and too rich to be 
chivalrous. The bishops became political Whig 
bishops, who despised a country they did not try 
to understand, and fleeced flocks they could not 
feed. One does not know whom to despise most 
— the English bishop who divided the revenues of 
his bishopric into two unequal parts, giving the 
larger half to members of his own family and the 
smaller half to the rest of the clergy of his diocese ; 
or the Welsh clergyman who divided his time, except 



ENGLISH WHIG BISHOPS 



3^5 



the time he was forced to be in church, between the 
pothouse and Welsh poetry, always artistic, and 
generally decent ; or the English Government which 
tried to transfer the revenue of a whole Welsh diocese 
to a prosperous and wealthy English town. 




26 



XXV 



THE AWAKENING 



Fairly early in the eighteenth century Griffith 
Jones of Llanddowror, a clergyman, realised how 
ignorant the Welsh peasants were, and discovered 
that they were anxious to learn. The modern system 
of Welsh education, which found its completion in 
our own day, has its beginning in a little country 
school in Carmarthenshire, maintained by the pence 
offered by the poorest of the poor at the celebration 
of the Lord's Supper. " The first attempt this way," 
wrote Griffith Jones in 1738, "was tried about seven 
or eight years ago, with no other funds to defray the 
expense of it than what could be spared from other 
occasions out of a small offertory by a poor country 
congregation at the blessed Sacrament, which, being 
laid out to erect one, and then a little time after- 
wards two Welsh schools, answered so well that this 
gave encouragement to attempt setting up a few 
more." 

Though Crown ministers and bishops thought it 

were better for Welshmen to lose their souls than to 

386 



HOW EL HARRIS 38/ 

be taught in Welsh, many Enghsh influences helped 
the religious awakening which so profoundly affected 
the national character before the century was to end. 
Rowland Vaughan had translated the " Practice of 
Piety " before Bala Lake had mirrored the flames of 
his burnt Caergai in the First Civil War ; Stephen 
Hughes had, among other labours of his industrious 
life, given Wales the " Pilgrim's Progress " ; every call 
to the unconverted and description of the whole duty 
of man was translated for the benighted Welshman's 
good. The itinerant schoolmasters sent by Griffith 
Jones were welcomed by many a pious clergyman. 
Dissenting ministers preached a calmer theology to 
flocks that tended to dwindle as toleration became 
more practical. 

The life forces that were drawing men irresistibly 
to the whirlpool of the French Revolution failed 
to attract Wales. A deaf ear was turned to lolo 
Morgannwg's advocacy of the brotherhood of men ; 
and Davydd lonawr, who represented the spirit of the 
eighteenth century, and whose " Ode to the Trinity " 
runs to more than thirteen thousand lines, slammed 
his door in the face of Jack Glan y Gors, the repre- 
sentative of the new political life in Wales. 

Wales was awakened by the trumpet voice of 
Howel Harris. His home, Trevecca, is between the 
ruins of Talgarth Castle and the legend-haunted 
Savaddan Lake. He was a man of stormy passions 
and of unconquerable will ; and to him was revealed 
the eternity which surrounds man's little span of life. 
His life was made up of attempts to bend his will to 
the will of God ; his thought was a lifelong, pas- 



THE HYMNS 389 

sionate pleading for the sanctification of his soul. 
His genius was of the creative kind ; his visions were 
so strange that it required almost superhuman deter- 
mination and a most enthralling eloquence to carry 
them out. At one time he saw the Welsh a military 
people, setting what was wrong in the world right ; 
and on many a British battlefield were his religionists 
found. At another time he planned an industrial 
community, in which the ideas of Christian com- 
munion are in prophetic union with modern economic 
schemes. He travelled from one end of Wales to 
the other, and his powerful eloquence and strange 
message aroused a half-educated, semi-superstitious 
people into a frenzied attempt at solving, in a 
religious form, the deepest problems of human life. 
Hosts of preachers, men of daring imagination and 
of real dramatic oratory, echoed his voice. And 
when English tourists, full of the new discovery of 
the beauty of wild nature, came to the mountains, 
they found a people, that had once been happy in 
their thoughtless indolence, now in the agony of 
mental doubt or hushed by a great and mysterious 
terror. 

The thoughts gained during the period of awaken- 
ing were perpetuated in song. There is one thing in 
Welsh literature that is more perfect even than the 
love-song, and that is the hymn. In the hymns of 
Williams Pant y Celyn, in moods as various as the 
passions of a fickle human heart, the mighty thoughts 
of a period of engrossing mental activity were given 
an utterance so melodious that they became a lasting 
heritage. Equally popular among Welshmen in every 



Holytitad 




WALES. 

After Tudor times 
O^i^ Coat «Ustricta sAaUttC ' 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 39 1 

part of the world are the hymns of a Montgomeryshire 
peasant girl, caught from her lips as she sang them at 
her spinning-wheel. 

The awakening intensified the desire for education. 
Gradually a system of schools was organised ; and on 
Sunday the whole country was turned into a school, 
where all taught and were taught in turn. The first 
period of awakening had discovered men of powerful 
oratory ; the second discovered men of quiet thought, 
of great power of organisation, with the gift of the 
teacher as well as of the writer, of whom Charles of 
Bala was the type. 

Developing side by side with the religious awaken- 
ing, but quite distinct from it at first, there was a 
strong literary awakening. Goronwy Owen spent 
most of his life in England pining for a living in his 
native Anglesey, and finally crossed the Atlantic, a 
human wreck, to die in the wilds of America. His 
longing ^or his country, and his echoes of its life, were 
the material of many odes ; the majestic thoughtful- 
ness and artistic diction of these odes raised Welsh 
poetry to life again. Lewis Morris appealed boldly 
to his countrymen in favour of the Welsh literature he 
himself had done so much to revive. From genera- 
tion to generation the works of the older poets had 
been diligently copied ; they were now imitated, and 
soon surpassed. 

The Sunday School found a counterpart in the 
Literary Meeting, which became a centre of education 
in most districts. A national united literary meeting 
takes the form of an Eisteddvod. Pretending hoary 
antiquity, possessing innumerable opportunities for 



-s 



\ 



THE EISTEDDVOD 



393 



guiding and shaping the national taste, the Eisteddvod 
has become a necessary part of Welsh life. Long 
before it took final shape, the religious and literary 
movements had merged into each other, and the 
strength of the one and the grace of the other found 
expression in the nineteenth century in the lyrics of 
Ceiriog and the odes of Islwyn. 

The awakening was a peasant awakening, and had 
no political significance or aim. The squires regarded 
it with unconcern. They thought it was the duty of 
the peasants to educate themselves ; their own duty 
was to legislate in Parliament, to supervise the poor 
laws, and to administer justice. But, should an 
industrial or a political revolution take place, a people 
had been educated to partake of the wealth of the 
new period with moderation or to partake of the self- 
government of the new period with wisdom. 




XXVI 

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 

The Reform Act of 1832 had very little effect on 
Wales. The enfranchisement of the small freeholder, 
the leaseholder, and the large farmer, did not alter the 
tone of political thought ; and the increase of the 
number of representatives, men without any deep 
sense of the particular needs of Wales, from twenty- 
seven to thirty-two, had no appreciable effect on any- 
thing. The leaders of the religious awakening were 
apathetic where not actively opposed to political 
reform. The literary awakening had given the 
peasant other interests. Gradually, however, there 
appeared signs of a coming political war. Great 
landlords tried to force their tenants to vote in the old 
way, and the country was aroused to the presence of 
a keen struggle, not unembittered by social and 
religious elements, from the wheat farms of the 
Towy to the sheep runs of Merioneth. The Chartism 
of the tiny manufacturing towns of the upper Severn, 
and of rising Merthyr Tydvil and Newport, showed 
that ideals of political reform had an attraction for 



THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE 397 

Welshmen. The Rebecca riots all over South Wales 
showed the existence of widespread agrarian dis- 
affection. The discordant voices of discontent found 
coherence in the Welsh newspapers begun by Roger 
Edwards and Gwilym Hiraethog. 

The second Reform Act, of 1867, brought an 
exceedingly bitter struggle between landlord and 
farmer. By the time of the third Reform Act, which 
enfranchised the agricultural labourer and the country 
artisan in 1885, political thought was as intense in 
Wales as in any other part of the kingdom. Slowly 
the revolution, during which many various aspects 
of political life were discovered — say the incisive 
political thought of a George Cornewall Lewis or the 
single-hearted devotion of a Thomas Ellis — entirely 
changed the voice of Wales in the British Parliament. 

The cause of so great and so rapid a change is a 
very definite one. It is the rise of the great industries. 
Wales had been a pastoral country. The Cistercian 
monk had discovered the value of its mountain-sides 
as sheep runs, to the mediaeval poet the wealth of 
Glamorgan was in its cornland and its glory in its 
primroses. The population increased rapidly ; the 
distance between the landowner and the farmers and 
labourers who lay so thickly on his land was con- 
tinually widening. It was only the bravest among a 
timid home-sick people that could brave the long 
voyage over the Atlantic to be lost in the wilds of 
America. 

Almost suddenly the vast mineral wealth of Wales 
was discovered. It is stated that, at the present day, 
while England and Scotland produce minerals to the 



COAL AND IRON 399 

value of about £2 per acre, the produce of Wales is 
over £^ per acre. The Romans may have found 
gold in Merioneth, and copper in Anglesey ; London 
obtained its water supply by means of wealth got out 
of Cardigan silver mmes. But it was in the nineteenth 
century that agriculture became less important in 
Wales than the mining and manufacturing industries. 
The slate and greenstone quarries of Arvon and 
Merioneth, the copper mines of Anglesey, the zinc 
mines of Denbigh, the lead mines of Flint and Mont- 
gomery, the gold mines of Merioneth, and the silver 
mines of Cardigan, the iron furnaces of Glamorgan 
and Monmouth, and the great inexhaustible coal 
mines — their history is crowded into the nineteenth 
century. 

The effects of the industrial revolution are apparent 
everywhere. By the mountain dingles and on the 
edges of the moorlands ruined cottages peep out of 
a wilderness of ash and willow, and flowers run wild, 
and the solitude deepens every year in glens once full 
of children who were born heirs to health and con- 
tented poverty. From North Wales the human 
stream flows continuously to the slate quarries of 
Arvon and Merioneth, to the coal mines of the lower 
Dee, and to swell the great Welsh population of 
Liverpool. From every part of Wales the peasant 
trudges to the valleys among the Glamorgan and 
Monmouth hills or to the great seaports on the South 
Wales coast, all teeming with people. Coal and steel 
and tinplate, of world-wide reputation, have given 
energy to the labour once bestowed indolently on 
peat and sheep and homespun. While the popula- 



400 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 

tion of the central shires is stationary or decHning, 
that of Glamorgan and Monmouth has increased 
fivefold within sixty years. From Newport to 
Swansea the Severn sea is covered with ships carrying 
to all parts of the world the wealth of the inex- 
haustible mines in the mountains ; Cardiff stands 
second among the ports of the kingdom, and third 
among the ports of the world. 

Trained by their self-education in religious and 
literary matters, enfranchised when the new wealth 
gave them political independence, the Welsh people 
were peculiarly adapted for local government In no 
part of the kingdom have the local councils — the 
County Council established in 1888 and the District 
Council and Parish Council established by the Local 
Government Act of 1894 — been so welcome and so 
active. 

The year 1894, which gave a measure of local 
government to the Welsh ratepayer, also brought the 
University of Wales. However strong the Welsh 
claim to self-government has been, the desire for 
becoming capable of self-government has been 
stronger. The development of education has at least 
kept pace with the growth of wealth and of political 
power. In primary education the itinerant and inter- 
mittent system of Griffith Jones gave place to the 
organised and successful work of the rival Welsh 
Education Committee and Cambrian Education 
Society — the beginning of the Voluntary and School 
Board systems respectively. The Sunday schools 
caused a demand for a better educated ministry, and 
schools like Ystrad Meurig and Castell Hywel and 



THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES 4OI 

Llandovery prepared the way for the Theological and 
University Colleges. Sir Hugh Owen connects the 
movements for primary and for higher education. 
His share in the rise of the training colleges gave him 
the experience that guided so wisely the development 
of higher education. He saw the establishment of the 
University College of Wales at Aberystwyth in 1872. 
In 1883 the University College of South Wales was 
established at Cardiff, and in 1884 the University 
College of North Wales at Bangor. In 1889 and the 
following years the system of intermediate schools 
between the primary schools and the colleges was 
organised. Lord Aberdare, the first President of the 
University College of Wales, lived to be the first 
Chancellor of the University of Wales. At the 
installation of the Prince of Wales as Chancellor of 
the University ^ little later, every class was repre- 
sented at Aberystwyth, united in welcoming the 
realisation of the dream of so many centuries. 




27 



XXVII 



CONCLUSION 



My story is at an end. My task is to relate, not to 
condemn or to justify. 

The development of Wales has been twofold — in 
national intensity and in the expansion of imperial 
sympathy. From Cressy and Agincourt to Albuera 
and Inkerman, its levies and regiments have done 
their duty ; from David Gam and Roger Williams to 
Picton and Nott, its sons have been where the surge 
of the advancing British wave has beaten fiercest. To 
the cause of capital it has given a Lord Overstone, to 
the cause of labour a Robert Owen. If its best and 
strongest thought has been given to Welsh literature, 
it has given to England thoughts that have not been 
entirely forgotten, from George Herbert to Henry 
V^aughan, and from John Dyer to William Morris. In 
the development of British art it is represented by 
Richard Wilson, John Gibson, and Burne Jones. 

The life of Wales, in the intense conservatism of its 
unbroken continuity, has not been selfish. The desire 
to give has been as strong as the desire to retain. No 

403 



404 CONCLUSION ■ 

colonist throws himself more readily into the life of 
his adopted country, but the new country will have an 
Eisteddvod and a Sunday school. His conservative 
desire for independence is strong enough to send him 
to almost superhuman toil in inhospitable Patagonia, 
and to maintain Welsh newspapers and magazines, 
full of old-world poetry and half-legendary history, 
among the modern and practical organs of the opinion 
of the United States. But the reminiscences of the 
old life are but a recreation of mind. In the struggle 
for American Independence, in the developing 
patriotism of the British Colonies, the Welshman has 
been among the foremost in devotion and energy. 
The first period of Welsh history ends with the poet's 
lament for its fallen princes ; the second ends with 
the poet's vision of a future of more self-conscious life 
and of greater service. The motto of Wales is to be 
that of its prince — " Ich dien." 




INDEX 



[Welsh (id = th in " breathe " : /= English v; ff = f; w= oo. 
written v in this book. Welsh c always — k."] 



The Welsh / is 



Aber, "of the white shells," 140, 

159, 185, 190 
Aberconvvay, 141, 143, 157, 159, 

175, 193, 239, 346 ; see Mae- 
nan 
Aberdare, H. A. Bruce, Lord, 

401 
Aberdaron, 62, 64, 75, 76 
Aberdovey (Aberdyvi), 133, 141, 

144 
Aberffraw, 37, 60, 196 
Abergavenny, 97, 98, iii, 140. 

206, 237, 314, 349 ; see Hasi 

ings 
Aber Gvvili, 30, 355 
Aberlleiniog, 57, 64, 66 
Abermarles, 317 
Aberystwyth, Ji, 77, 83, 129, 130, 

178, 179, 279, 401 
Acts — 

Education, 401 

Local Government, 400 

Propagation of Gospel, 379 

Reform, 395 

Repression, 274-5 

Union, 311, 327, 335 
Adam of Usk, 276 
Aelfgar of Mercia, 41 
Agreement of the People, 376 
Agricola, 23 
Alexander of Scotland, 73 



Alexander of Bangor, 112 

Alfred, King, 34 

Alice, d. of Henry de Lacy, 204 

America. 348, 397 

Amicia, 103 

Amobr, a fine, 222 

Anarawd ap Griffith, 82, 83 

Anarawd ap Rhodri, 35 

Angharad, d. of Meredith, 40 

Angharad, w. of G. ap Conan, 

64 
Angharad, d. of Lord Rees, 94 
Angles, 17, 26, 28-30, 40 
Anglesey, 12, 13 ; see Mon ; 196, 

213, 261, 312, 317, 329, 363, 

390 
Anian, bp. of St. Asaph, 171 
Anne Neville, w. of Richard IIL, 

299 
Aran, mountain peak, 5, 244 
Ardudwy, 197 

Arennig, mountain peak, 13 
Arllechwedd, 196 
Armada, Spanish, 353 
Arthen, Gwent chief, 112 
Arthur, 29, 30, 109, 112, 208 ; 

crown of, 31, 190, 208 
Arthur, s. of Geoffrey, 103 
Arundel, FitzAlans of, 357 
Arundel, Edmund FitzAlan, 

second earl of, 253 
Arundel. Richard FitzAlan, first 

earl of, 205 



405 



4o6 



INDEX 



Arundel, Richard FitzAlan, third 

earl of, 253 
Arundel, Richard FitzAlan,fourth 

earl of, 253, 257 
Arundel, Thomas FitzAlan, fifth 

earl of, 253, 257, 258, 270, 272 
Arvon, 3, 8, 51, 187, 197 
Arwystli, 51, 56, 73, 88, 313 
Assembly of Nominees, Welsh 

members, 377 
Asser, biographer of Alfred, 35 
Astley, Sir Jacob, 365 
Aulus Didius, 20 
Aulus Plautius, 18 
Avon (= river), 114 



Bacon, Stephen, 164, 166 

Bala, 202, 259 

Baldwin, archb. Canterbury, 

105, 123 
Bangor, 92, 119, I2i, 129, 284, 

342, 349, 401 
Bangor, diocese, 17, 118 
Bards, 215, 234, 261-268, 299, 

308, 37« 
Bardsey (Ynys Enlli), 64 
Barlow, bp. St. David's, 340-341 
Barmouth (Abermaw), 118 
Barry, 113 
Barons' War, 169 
Basaleg (Maesaleg), 260 
Basingwerk, 86, 91, 92, 178, 346 
Battles— 

Aber Gwili, 40 

Agincourt, 403 

Albuera, 403 

Bannockburn, 215 

Bloody Acre (Gwaed Erw), 52 

Bosworth, 300 

Bron yr Erw, 52 

Bryn Glas, 276 

Cardigan, 78-79 

Chester, 29 

Conway, 35 

Cressy, 239, 240, 255, 271, 403 

Deorham, 29 

Edgecote, 245, 297 

Edgehill, 354, 359, 360 



Battles {continued) : — • 

Evesham, 170, 230, 239 

Fethanlea, 29 

Grosmont, 140 

Highnam, 360 

Inkerman, 405 

Llandeilo, 188 

Moel y Don, 187 

Mortimer's Cross, 294 

Mynydd Carn, 54 

Mynydd PwU Melyn, 281 

Naseby, 359, 364 

Northampton, 293 

Pencader, 41 

Rhyd y Groes, 41, 42 

St. Albans, 294 

St. Dogmels, 55 

St. Fagans, 368 

Shrewsbury, 278 

Tewkesbury, 296 

Towton, 295 

Towy, 41 

Vyrnwy, 276 
Baxter, Richard, 328, 332, 381 
Beaumaris, 201, 202, 213, 260 
Beavers, 117 
Bede, 29 
Belesme, Robert of, 57, 63, 67- 

70, 122 
Benedict XII., 279 
Bennett, John, Jesuit, 350 
Bernard of Neufmarche, 55, 59, 

65, no 
Berwyn, 3, 17, 19, 89, 244, 269, 

313 
Bible, Welsh, 348-350, 368 
Bifort, LI., bp. of Bangor, 279, 

285 
Birds, 109, 116, 121, 263, 281 
Black Death, 244-247 
Black Mountains (Mynydd Du), 

6, 7, 15, 17, 35, 136, 205 
Black Nations, 33 
Black Prince, 236, 239-241, 247 
Bleddyn ap Cynvyn, 43-50 
Blue knight of Raglan, 293 
Blyth, bp. Geoffrey, 325 
Bodville, J., one of Nominees, 

359 
Bohun, Humphrey de, earl of 
Hereford, 205 



INDEX 



407 



Bohun, Humphrey de, earl of 

Hereford, 206, 227 
Bourne, bp., 326 
Bow (long, short, cross), 112, 

213, 237-239, 241, 247, 295 
Braose, Giles de, 134 
Braose, John de, 136 
Braose, Matilda de, 170 
Braose, Reginald de, 135 
Braose, William de, 97, 98, 102- 

104, 110-114 
Braose, WilHam de, 137 
Bradshaw, Judge, 331-332 
Brecon (Aberhonddu), 56, 103, 

136, 178, 205, 313, 325, 349 
Brecknockshire, 313, 318, 329, 

376 
Brereton, Sir William, 361, 363 
Bretvvalda, 26 
Brian of the Island, iii 
Bridgnorth, 68-70, 231, 274 
Bristol (Bryste), 43, 244, 257, 

363, 365 
Britain, 27, 147 ; crown of, 31 
Britons, 23, 29, 31, 76, 147, 353 
Brittany (Llydavv), 54, 100, 278, 

296, 298, 353 
Brown, J., one of Nominees, 377 
Brute, Walter, 267, 268 
Brycheiniog, 5, 35, 40, 5o, 55, 65, 

79, 103, 108, 313 
Bryn = hill 
Brythons, 12-17 
Buckingham, Duke of, 298 
Bulkeleys, 320 
Builth, town (Llanvair Muallt) 

and district (Buallt), 136, 138, 

168, 183, 202,304, 313 



Cadell ap Griffith, 87, 93 

Cadell ap Rhodri, 35 

Cader Idris, i, 5, 272 

Cader Vronwen, 5 

Cadogan (Cadwgan) ap Bleddyn, 

65-73 
Cadwaladr, king of Britons, 29, 

31, 310 
Cadwaladr ab O. Gwynedd, 
81-85, 87-89, 91, 92, 121 



Cadwallon, 29 

Cadwallon ap Madoc, 95 

Caer, sec Chester 

Caereinion, 72, 164 

Caerleon (Caerlleon ar Wysg), 

23, 112, 202, 253, 314 
Caerphilly, 171, 199, 205, 227, 

233 
Caerwys, 157, 202, 305 
Caio, 115 
Camalodunum, 21 
Cambridge (Caergrawnt), 347 
Canterbury (Caer Gaint), 126, 

243 
Cantrev, division of land, 148 
Cantrev Coch (Red Cantrev), 

318 
Cantrevs, Four, 161-163, 166, 

169, 171, 179, 181, 186, 197 
Cantrev Mawr, 115 
Caradoc of Gvvent, 54 
Caratacus (Caradog), 19-20 
Carausius, 27 
Cardiff (Caerdydd), 7, 55, 59, 97, 

114, 130, 140, 202, 230, 233, 259, 

278,314,328,352,364,377,378, 

400, 401 
Cardigan (Aberteivi), 72, 78-79, 

91, 94, loi, 137, 202, 263 
Cardiganshire, 198, 209, 214, 274, 

312, 315, 318, 329, 376 
Carew, 57, 278, 364 
Carmarthen (Caer Vyrddin), 23, 

24,77,82,84,115,132,137,140, 

164, 178, 202, 212, 258, 259, 277, 

278, 286, 30T, 317, 322, 341, 349 
Carmarthenshire, 198, 299, 300, 

312, 315, 318, 329, 376, 386 
Carnarvon (Caernarvon), 23, 24, 

119, 201, 202, 208, 212, 260, 275, 

278 
Carnarvonshire, 196, 272, 312, 

317, 329, 376, 399 
Carnwyllion, 317 
Carreg Cenen, 277 
Castell Hywel, 400 
Catuvelauni, 19 
Ceawlin, Saxon leader, 28 
Cecils, 311, 326, 348 
Ceiriog, river, 89 
Ceiriog (J. C. Hughes), poet, 393 



408 



INDEX 



Celt, 12-15 
Cemmes, 57-59> 132 
Cenarth, 71 
Cenfig, 59, 202, 259 
Cenwulf, king of Mercia, 33 
Ceredigion, 5, 15, 30, 35, 41, 50, 

57, 69, 71, ll> 77. 81, 84, 88, 

96, 129, 163, 169, 178, 181 ; 

see Cardiganshire 
Ceridwen, 30 
Cevn Digoll, 214 
Charles 1 , 355, 357, 364, 3^5 
Charles II., 381 
Charles VI. of France, 282 
Charles, Thomas, of Bala, 390 
Charlton — 

Edward, 253 

John, 232, 253 

John, 253, 258, 272, 304 
Chepstow, 96, 296, 314, 361, 367 
Chester (Caer), 23, 24, 29, 46-49, 

56, 63, 73, 86, 89, 91, 100, 121, 

150, 163, 166, 175, 181, 184, 212, 

274, 278, 319, 361, 367, 390 
Chester, earldom of, sec Hugh 

the Wolf, Roger, Ranulph, 

Hugh Cyveiliog, Simon de 

Montford, Edward I. 
Children, 114, 131, 274, 285, 372 
Chirk (Castell y Waen), 204, 

225, 357, 367 ^ 

Christiana, w. of O. Gwynedd, 

125 

Christianity, 20, 24, 28, 30, 125, 

268 
Chronicle of the Princes (Brut 

y Tywysogion), 31, 102, 147, 

175, 180 
Church, Welsh, 107, 112, 125- 

126, 146, 182, 183, 282-284, 

304, 385 
Cilgeran, 57, 91, 117, 207 
Cil Owen, 86 
Cistercians, 30, 92, 102, 131, 143, 

146, 148, 193, 2 [2, 267, 346 
Clare, 136, 146, 254, 346 
Clare, Eleanor de, 225 
Clare, Gilbert de, 72, 73, 96 
Clare, Gilbert de, thi Red, earl 

of Gloucester, 169-172, 188, 

199, 205, 207, 209, 211, 215, 234 



Clare, Gilbert de Clare, 207, 

219, 225, 233 
Clare, Roger de, 88, 93 
Clare, Richard de, of Gloucester, 

96, 103, III 
Clare, Richard de, of Pembroke, 

Strongbow, 94, 96 
Claudius, emperor, 18 
Clergy, Welsh, 118, 121, 183, 

223, 346, 380, 384 
Clifford, Roger, 169, 185 
Clifford, Walter, 88, 93 
Clwyd, Vale of (Dyffryn Clwyd), 

7, 48, 121, 179, 212 
Cole, Coilus, 30 
Coleshill, 121 

Colleges, proposed, 381 ; theo- 
logical, 400 ; University, 401 
Colonisation, 397, 402 
Commote, division of land, 148 
Conan ab Owen Gwynedd (Cy- 

nan), 82, 85, 86 
Conan ap Rhodri, 32-34 
Conoch, 341 
Conway, Conwy, river, valley, 

town, 3, 34, 129, 157, 158, 162, 

178, 184, 189, 193,201,202,212, 

272, 357, 363 
Cornwall, 29 
Coroners, elected by freeholders, 

333 
Corwen, 56, 89, 93, 285 
Council of princes, 133, 143, 

144-146, 149, 167, 175, 189 
Count of the Saxon Shore, 26 
County Council, 400 
Court, County, 333 
Court of High Commissioners, 

348 
Court of the Marches of Wales, 

303, 321-330, 347 
Court of March lordship, 321, 

330 
Courtenay, Hugh, 377 
Cowbridge (Pont Vaen), 59, 202, 

349 
Coyty, 59, 227, 262, 279 
Creuddyn, commote of, 196 
Criccieth, 154, 168, 201, 202, 259 
Cromwell, Oliver, 13, 311, 3$^ 

367-373, 379, 383 



INDEX 



409 



Cromwell, Thomas, 311-3 12, 325, 

340-341 
Crug Mawr, 117 
Crusades, 99, 108, 112, 114, 117, 

121, 123, 186, 255 
Cunedda, family of, 27 --- 
Cwm Hir, 141, 188, 346 
Cymbeline, 19 
Cymer, or Vanner, 157, 346 
Cymru (Wales), 3, 147 
Cymry (the Welsh), 147 
Cynddelw, 92, 99, loi, 124, 146 
Cynddylan, 30 
Cynog, saint, 107 
Cynwrig ap Rees, 118 
Cynvvrig ap Rhiwallon, 50-52 
Cyveiliog, 88, 183, 313 



D 



Danes, 17, 34, 39, 40 

David (Dewi), patron saint, 30, 

341 
David Gam, Sir, 283, 289 
David Leget Brith, 271 
Davies, bp. Richard, 349 
Davydd ab O.Gwynedd (Davydd 

I.), 86, 93, 100, 119, 121, 125, 

128 
Davydd ap Llywelyn (Davydd 

II.), 143, 150, 153-159 
Davydd ap Griffith (Davydd 

HI.), 160, 167, 173. 175, I7«, 

182, 183-186, 189-193 
Davydd ab Edmund, 306, 307 
Davydd ap Gwilym, 261, 263, 

266-268, 306, 314, 319 
Davydd Benvras, 147 
Davydd lonawr, 387 
Davydd Nanmor, 306 
Decangi, Cangi, 15, 19 
Dee (Dyvrdwy), i, 3, 41, 48, 89, 

122, 164, 252, -269, 367 
Devereux, bp. Richard, 342, 343 
Deganvvy, 27, 33, 53, 57, 64, 66, 

129, 157, 161, 164, 166, 169, 

197 
Deheubarth, 40, 41, 50, 54, 76, 

78, 178, 318 
Deheudir, see South Wales 
Deities, Celtic, 30 



Demetae, 15 

Denbigh (Dinbych), 3, i6i, 179, 

189, 202, 204, 212, 259, 367 ; 

dogs of, 13 
Denbighshire, 312, 317. 329. 377 
Dermot, 96 

Dervel Gadarn, 341, 345 
Despenser, Hugh le, 225, 229 

233, 234, 259 
Dialects, Welsh, 8, 197, 317-319 
Dinas Bran, 164, 205, 269 
Dinas Dinlle, 15 
Dingestow, 98 
Dinorwic, 230 
Dissenters, 384, 387 
District Council, 400 
Dol = meadow 
Dol Aeron, 266 
Dolbadarn, 190 
Dolgehau, 282, 283, 334 
Dolvorwyn, 178, 204 
Dominicans, 262, 264, 265 
Dovey (Dyvi), 5, 118, 272, 313 
Dragon Standard, 255, 275, 300 
Dryslvvyn, 211 
Dublin (Dulyn), 34 
Dumbarton, 34 
Dux Britanniarum, 26 
Dyddgu (" F'air as day "), 262 
Dyer, John, 403 
Dyffryn = valley 
Dyffryn Chvyd, see Chvyd 

Vale of 
Dynevor, 37, 53, 60, 76, 115, 164 

168, 210, 277, 317 
Dyserth, 164, 169 
Dyved, 35, 53, 57, 60, 65, 68-70 

79, 91, 94, 132, 136, 137, 164 



Eadgyth, w. of G. ap Llywelyn 

42 " 
Eadric the Wild, 46 
Edeyrnion, 56, 197, 269, 277 
Edmund, see Tudor 
Edmund of Lancaster, 178 
Edmund of York, 292, 293 
Edynved Vychan, 100, 154, 156 
Edward I., 160-168, 170, 172- 

203, 208-217 



4IO 



INDEX 



Edward II., 208, 209, 218-235 

Edward III., 236, 239, 255, 257 

Edward IV., 292, 297, 322 

Edward V., 297-298 

Edward VII., 401 

Edward, Prince of Wales, 291- 

296 
Edwards, Roger, 395 
Einion, 154 
Einion, poet, 147 
Einon, 88 
Eisteddvod, 101-102, 305-307, 

390-393, 404 
Eivion, Eivionydd, 3, 197, 201 
Eivl, " Rivals," mountains, 208 
Eleanor, w. of Llywelyn the 

Great, 176 
Eleanor, w. of Llywelyn ap 

G., d. of Simon de Montfort, 

Lady of Snowdon, 175, 177, 

180, 268 
Eleanor, w. of Edward I., 193, 

209 
Eleanor, d. Gilbert the Red, 225 
Elen of the Legions, 24, 30 
Elidir, 147 
Elidorus, 114 

Elizabeth, queen, 326-328, 347 
Elizabeth of York, 151, 298 
Elizabeth, " the V^^elshwoman," 

193 
Ellesmere, 318 
Ellis, Thomas, 397 
Elucidarium, 266 
Eluned, feast of, 109 
Elvel, 5, 59, 102, 103, 108, 313 
England (Lloegr), 5, 66, 82, 84, 

137, 169, 348, 352, 372, 397 
England, New, first hint of, 348 
Englfield, Englefeld (Tegeingl), 

88, 198 
Enghsh, 92, 384 
Enid, 262 

Epynt, mountains, 99, 348 
Eryri, Snowdon range, 3 
Essex, Earl of, 360 
Ethelfrith of Northumbria, 29 
Eva, w. of Strongbow, 96 
Eva, d. of Madoc, 99 
Evans, Arise, 13 
Evans, Philip, Jesuit, 352 



Evans, Theophilus, 383-384 
Ewer, Col., 368 
Ewyas Lacy, 225, 318 
Exeter, 326 



Fairies (Tylwyth Teg), 114 
Faulkes de Breaute, 130, 139 
Feathers, Prince of Wales', 240, 

295 
Ferrers, Lord, 322 
Flemings, 70, 72, 'j^, 79, 82, 88, 

115 
Flint, 3, 84, 87, 178, 184, 361 
Flintshire, 198, 312, 317, 329, 377 
Flower-Aspect (Blodeuwedd),30 
Flowers, named after the Virgin, 

264 
Flowers, Vale of, see Strata 

Florida 
France, 216, 239, 241, 276, 278, 

279, 289 
Franciscans, 146, 170, 262-271, 

278, 342 
Friars, 262-268, 304-305, 345 ; 

sec Dominicans, Franciscans 



G 



Gavel-kind, 199 

Gaveston, Piers, 204, 219, 225, 

226 
Geneu'r Glyn, lordship of, 161- 

162, 164 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 113 
Gerald of Windsor, 65, 70-72, 

77, 116 
Gerald the Welshman, sec 

Giraldus 
Gerard, of Court of Wales, 336 
Gerard, Col. Charles, 363-365 
Gibson, John, sculptor, 403 
Gildas, 28 

Gild Merchant, 258-260 
Giraldus Cambrensis, 105-123, 

124-126, 146, 201, 237, 283, 

317 
Gladys, d. of G. ap Rees, 95, 97 
Gladys Ddu (the Dark), 151, 159 



INDEX 



411 



Glamor.i^an, sec Morgannwg, 
97, 113, 132, 164, 169, 170, 205, 
209, 212, 226, 234 
Glamorganshire, 314, 318, 329, 

364, 369, 376, 378, 398-400 
Glamorgan, Vale of (Bro Mor- 
gannwg), 7, 8 
Glamorgan, Earl of, 367 ; sec 

Herbert 
Glasgwm, 108 
Glevum, 19 ; sec Gloucester 
Gloucester (Caerloew), 29, 32, 
231, 274, 319, 360 ; earldom 
of, see Robert of G., Clare 
Gloucestershire, 323 
Glyndyvrdwy, 269, 277, 285 
Glyn of Glyn Llivon, 377 
Glynrhonddu, 314 
Goidels, 12-17, 23 
Goodman, Dean, 350 
Goronwy Owen, 12, 390 
Gower (Gwyr), 82, 115, 136,229, 

259, 314 
Gregory X., 175 

Grey Friars, 284, see Franciscans 
Grev, Reginald de, second lord 

of Ruthin, 182 
Grey, Reginald de, third lord of 

Ruthin, 251, 270, 272, 293 
Grev, Sir John, 240 
Griffith = Gruffydd 
Griffith ab Owen, 232 
Griffith ap Conan (Gruffydd ab 

Cynan,) 51-56, 63-66, 68, 70, 

73-76, 78-80 
Griffith ap Conan ap G., 118 
Griffith ap Davydd ap Griffith, 

251, 252 
Griffith ap Griffith ap Rees, 117, 

129, 130 
Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, 155, 

157, 164, 167, 169, 172, 173, 

175, 177, 183 
Griffith ap Llywelyn, king, 41-43 
Griffith ap Llywelyn the Great, 

138, 142, 150, I =13-156 
Griffith ap Madoc (Gruffydd 

Maelor), 99, 102, 122 
Griffith ap Madoc (lord of Brom- 

i^eld), 155, 157, 164, 165, 167, 

172 



Griffith ap Meredith (Gruffydd 
ab Meredydd), 181-183, 188 

Grifiith ap Nicholas, 307 

Griffith ap Rees (Gruffydd ab 
Rhys), 63, 76-79, 109-110, 117, 
118 

Griffith ap Thomas, beheaded, 

323 
G4iffith of Pool, 232 
Griffith, Ellis, soldier, 286, 322 
Griffith,John,of Cefnamwlch,359 
Griffith Richard, Lancastrian, 

299 
Griffiths, Anne, hymn-writer, 390 
Gunpowder, political import- 
ance of, 247 
Gurth, son of Godwin, 41 
Gutyn Owen, poet, 305 
Gwalchmai, '6^, 92, loi, 148 
Gwendolen, w. of Lord Rees, 107 
Gwenllian, d. of G. ap Conan, 

78, 115 
Gwenllian, d. of Lord Rees, 100 
Gwenllian, d. of Madoc, loi ^^^ 
Gwenllian, d. of Llywelyn, 185, 

214 
Gwen, " the white one," 237 
Gwent, 12, 15, 24, 35, 40, 59, 65, 

98, III, 237, 260, 278, 313 ; see 

Monmouthshire 
Gwenwynwyn, 102, 128, 129, 

131, 133 
Gwerthrynion, 95, 107, 163 
Gwestva, a tax, 223 
Gwilym, nephew of Glendower, 

272 
Gwilym Hiraethog, 395 
Gwledig, 26 
Gwydion ab Don, 30 
Gvvvnedd, 5, 15, 37, 40, 41, 46, 

53, 56,68,74,78,82, 118, 128, 

133 
Gwynllwg, or Gwenllwg, 113, 

313 
Gwynne, Judge, 336 
Gwys, 137 

H 

Harlech, 201, 202, 259, 275, 282, 
285, 291, 294, 295, 304, 367 ; 
crows of, 13 



412 



INDEX 



Harris, Howel, 387-388 
Harrison, 378-380 
Harold, 41-43, 122 
Harp, the, lor, 289 
Hastings, Sir Edward de, 251 
Hastings, John de, second Baron, 

207, 219 
Hastings, John de, 251 
Havard, Jenkin, castellan, 277 
Haverfordwest (Hwlffordd), 115, 

136, 137, 262, 299, 320, 363, 

371, 377 
Hawarden (Penarlag), 184, 350, 

361 
Hawys of Powys, 232 
Hay (Gelli), 169 
Heath, bp., 326 
Henry I., 68-78, 116 
Henry H., 9, 85-95, 112, 113, 

116, 121 
Henry HI., 135, 153, 164. 165, 

168, 171, 172 
Henry IV., 229, 254, 256, 258, 

270-278 
Henry V., 272, 281, 289-291, 321 
Henry VI., 291-295 
Henry VII., 292, 294, 296, 298- 

301, 310, 323 
Henry VIII., 151, 329 
Henry of Navarre, 353 
Henry de Bohemond, 77 
Herberts, 311 

Herbert, George, poet, 376 
Herbert, Henry, earl of Pem- 
broke, 328 
Herbert,Henry, Parliamentarian. 

359 

Herbert, lord of Raglan, earl of 
Glamorgan, 360, 367 

Herbert, Mary, Countess of 
Pembroke, 328 

Herbert, Walter, 299 

Herbert, Sir William, Yorkist, 
293-297 

Herbert, William, earl of Pem- 
broke, 308. 325-326 

Herbert, William, Royalist, 357 

Hereford (Henffordd), 32, 42, 
49-51, 122, 202, 274, 294, 319 

Herefordshire, 318, 323 

Hiraethog, mountains, 161, 312 



Hi r las horn, 99 

Holt, 361 

Holyhead (Caergybi), 40 

Holywell (Treffynnon), 129, 351 

Hope (Estyn), 182, 184, 198, 259 

Horm, Danish sea-king, 34 

Horton, Col, 368 

Hotspur, 254, 258, 272 

Howel the Good (Hywel Dda), 

35-37 ; 5^^' Laws of Howel 
Howel, bp., 155 
Howel ab Edwin, 41 
Howel ab Owen Gwynedd, 82, 

85 
Howel ap Griffith ap Conan, 

141 
Howel ap Rhodri, 32, 33 
Howel Gethin, 271 
Howel Sele of Nannau, 283 
Howel Vychan, 272 
Howel Vychan, spy, 278 
Hubert de Burgh, 139-140 
Hubert's Folly, 139 
Huet, Thomas, 349 
Hugh Cyveiliog, 100, 102 
Hugh of Chester, the Wolf, 48, 

53, 57,63, 66, 119 
Hugh the Red, see Montgomery 
Hughes, bp. of St. Asaph, 351 
Hughes, Stephen, 387 
Hundred system, 333 



I 

lal, Yale, 86 

Iberian, loose meaning of term, 

10, 12-14 
Ich dien, 240, 402 
Ida, the flame-bearer, 28 
levan Clochydd, 271 
leuan Deulwyn, 297, 306 
Independent, 367, 368 
Innocent III., 131, 134 
Innocent IV., 156-157 
Instrument of Government, 377 
lolo Goch, lolo of the Red 

Gown, 240, 255, 271, 277, 283, 

286, 306 
lolo Morgannwg, 387 
lorwerth ab Owen, 95 
lorwerth ap Bleddyn, 68-72 



INDEX 



413 



Ireland, 15, 34. 5i, 64, 66, 76, 87, 
91, 94, 96, 106, 116, 117, 137, 
224, 236, 244, 276, 367 

Irish, 52, 254, 361 

Iron, magic properties of, 13, 

24, 397 
Irvon, river, 188 
Isabel, d. of Strongbow, 96 
Islwyn, II, 319, 393 
Ithel ap Griffith, 46 
Ivor Hael (the Generous), 261, 

314 
Ivor the Little (Ivor Bach), 113 

J 
Jack Glan y Gors, 387 
Jacobites, Welsh, 384 
James I., 335 
Jasper, sec Tudor 
Jeffreys, Judge, 331, 332, 37«, 

381 
Jenkms, Judge, 373 
Jesuits, Welsh, 345, 350-352 
Jews, 182 
Joan, w. of Llywelyn the Great, 

128, 130, 140 
Joan, heiress of Pembroke, 182 ; 

see Valence 
John, king, 103-106, 128-134, 

144 
Jones, E. Burne, 403 
Jones, GrifBth, Llanddowror, 

386-387 
Jones, Col. John, Maes y Garnedd, 

373, 377, 383 

Jones, Col. Michael, 363 

Jones, Col. Philip, Swansea, 378 

Jones, Robert, Jesuit, 351-352 

Jones, R., of Trewern, 359 

Judges, Welsh, 336-337 

Julius Frontinus, 23 

Jury, 222, 223 

Justice, of Chester, 198 ; of North 
Wales, 349 ; of Snowdon, 197, 
329 ; of South Wales, 198, 329 

Justice of the peace, 331-333 

K 

Kemeys, Sir Nicholas. 368, 369 
Kenihvorth, 176, 177, 185 



Kenyon, Judge, 336 
Kidwelly, 58^, 59, 77, 79, 94, 115, 
132, 138, 199, 317 



Labour, 244-247, 250, 271, 281 

288, 308, 337, 403 
Lacharn, lordship of, 317 
Lacy, Henry de, 204, 212 
Lake legends, 13, 374 
Lambe, John, assassin, 242 
Lampeter (Llanbedr Pont Ste- 

phan), 118, 274 
Lamphey, 342 
Lancaster, see Henry IV. 
Lancastrians, 285, 294 
Lance, the, 119, 213, 216, 238 
Langley, Geoffrey, 161-162, 164 
Laud, archbp., 355, 375 
Laugharne (Talachorn), 278 
Laugharne, Major-Gen. Row- 
land, 365-368, 371, 372 
Laws of Howel, 37-39, 40, 183, 

187, 232, 308 
Lear, king, 30 

Lee, bp. Rowland, 325, 326, 329 
Leek, the, 255. Some take the 
daffodil as the national flower. 
The Welsh word cciihincn, 
pi., ccniu, is the same for both 
Leominster (Llanllieni), 122, 274 
Lewis, wise physician, 381 
Lewis, David, Jesuit, 352 
Lewis, George Cornewall, 395 
Lewis Glyn Cothi, 297, 306, 308 
Lewis, John, of Aberystwyth, 

381 
Liverpool, 7, 165, 363, 397 
Llanavan, 107 
Llanbadarn, 118 
Llanberis, 4 
Llanbleddian, 59 
Llandaff, diocese of, 17 
Llandderfel, 345 
Llanddewi Brevi, 118 
Llanddowror, 386 
Llandeilo, 188 
Llandovery (Llanymddyvri), ']'j, 

88, 210, 277,317,401 
Llandudno, 27 



4H 



INDEX 



Llandyvrydog, 66 

Llangorse, 204 

Llanidloes, 332 

Llanrhaidr ym Mochnant, 348, 

349 
Llan Rhystyd, 84 
Llanstephan, 82 
Llantony, 11 1 
Llantrisant, 234, 259 
Llan Vaes, 140, 185, 262, 271 
Llanvaes (Brycheiniog), 108 
Llanvyllin, 202, 332 ; deer of, 13 
Llech Lavar, 116 
Lleyn, 3, 51, 53, I79, I97, 208 
Llio, 263 

Lloyd, F., of Maes y Velin, 359 
Lloyd, John, student, 271 
Lloyd, Morgan, see Llwyd 
Lludd a Llevelys, romance, 255 
Llwyd, Morgan, o Wynedd, 373, 

376,378-381 
Llvvyn Pina, 86 
Llywelyn ap Griffith, 159-192 
Llywelyn aplorwerth (the Great), 

126, 127-151 
Llywelyn ap Seisyll, 40 
Llywelyn Bren, 227-228, 233 
Lollardry, 267-268, 304-306 
London (Caer Ludd), 21, 28, 45, 

150, 180, 188-189, 219, 285, 345 
LonglDow, see Bow 
Lord Rees (Yr Arglwydd Rhys), 

see Rees ap Griffith 
Lud (Lludd Llaw Arian), 30 
Ludlow (Llwydlo), 122, 139, 224, 

274, 291, 311, 323, 327, 351 

M 

Mabel, of Montgomery, 49, 57 
Mabel, d. of Fitz Hamon, 97 
Mabinogion, Welsh tales, 124 
Machynelleth, 232, 282, 283, 313 
Madoc (Mad ig) 212-214 
Madoc ap Meredith (Madog ab 

Meredydd), 78, 85, 88, 89, 99, 

loo-ioi 
Madoc ap Rhirid, 71-73 
Madryn, Col. Thomas, 378 
Maeldav the Old (Maeldav 

Hen), 27 
Maelgwn ap Cadwallon, 141 



Maelgwn ap Rees (Maelgwn ab 
Rhys), 117, 118, 119, 126, 129 
131-133, 140 

Maelgwn Gwynedd, 27, 133 

Maelgwn Vychan, of Dyved, 
212, 214 

Maelor, Vale of (Dyffryn Maelor), 
3, 29, 158, 269 ; Welsh Maelor 
(Maelor Gymraeg), 313 ; Eng- 
lish Maelor (Maelor Saesneg), 
198 

Maenan, 193 ; see Aberconway 

Maesaleg, 306, 314 ; see Basaleg 

Maesyved, see Radnor 

Magna Carta, 126, 132-135, 142, 

373 
Magnus, 66, 119 
Manorbier, 105, 1 16 
Mansels, 320 
Mansel, Bussy, 377 
Margam, 97, 114, 346 
Margaret, d. of Llywelyn, 136 
Margaret, d. of Gilbert the Red, 

225 
Margaret of Anjou, 291-293 
Margaret, w. of Edward IV., 

298 
Margaret, Lady, Beaufort, 292, 

298 
Marriage customs, 14 
Marshall, Richard, 140 
Marshall, Walter, 154 
Marshall, William, earl of Pern 

broke, 96, I35-I37 
Marshall, William (younger), 

134, 137-140 
Martin of Tours, 57-59 
Mary, the Virgin (Mair Vorwyn), 

worship and flowers of, 262- 

264 
Mary, queen, 311, 312, 327 
Mary, heiress of the Bohuns, 254 
Mathraval, 37, 130 
Maud de St. Valerie, 103, 104 
Maud Longespee, Countess of 

Salisbury, 198 
Maurice Pltz Gerald, 94 
Maurice of London, 79, 115 
Mawddwy, lordship of, 315 ; 

brigands of, 334 ; gadflies of, 

13' 



INDEX 



415 



Meilir, a prophet, 113 
Meilir ap Rhivvallon, 51, 54 
Meirionnydd, 52, 82, 94, 128, 

138, 163, 197 ; see Merioneth, 

Merionethshire 
Melenydd, 84, 95, 108, 313 
Menai, 21, 84, 119 
Mendicant Orders, 156 ; see 

Dominicans, Franciscans 
Mennes, Sir John, 361, 363 
Mercia, 32-42, 47 
Meredith (Meredydd ab Owen), 

40 
Meredith ab Owen ap Howel, 46 
Meredith ab Owen of Cere- 
digion, 163, 167, 172 
Meredith ap Bleddyn, 68-74 
Meredith ap Conan (Meredydd 

ab Cynan), 128 
Meredith ap Griffith (Meredydd 

ab Gruffydd), 46 
Meredith ap Griffith ap Rees, 84, 

93 
Meredith ap Madoc, 146 
Meredith ap Rees (Meredydd ab 

Rhys), 163, 164, 167-168, 171, 

172 ; sons of, 181, 182 
Meredith ap Robert, 141 
Merioneth, 24, 119 ; see Meirion- 
nydd 
Merionethshire, 197, 272, 274, 

312, 315, 320, 329, 377, 383, 

400 
Merhn (Myrddin), 30, 113, 115, 

117, 188, 208, 286 
Merthyr Tydvil, 394 
Mervin (Mervyn Vrych), 33 
Mervin ap Rhodri, 35 
Middleton, Sir T., 359, 361, 363, 

367, 368, 372 
Milford (Aberdaugleddau), 257 
Mineral wealth of Wales, 24, 

395-400 
Milo, of Hereford, 109, no 
Milton, John, 328, 355, 368 
Miskin, 314 
Mold (Wyddgrug) 84, 85, 129, 

169 
Mon, 3, 7, 21, 24, 27, 34, 51, 57, 

64, 66, 84, 87, 119, 158, 164, 

178, 179, 187, 196; sec Anglesey 



Monasteries, dissolution of, 345- 

346 
Monks, see Cistercians 
Monmouth (Mynwy), 170, 289, 

361, 367 
Monmouthshire, 313, 315, 319, 

320, 364, 376, 378-399 
Monnington-upon-Wye, 285 
Monnow, river, 313 
Montfort, Amaury de, 177, 185 
Montfort, Eleanor de, see 

Eleanor, Lady of Snowdon 
Montfort, Guy de, 176, 185 
Montfort, Henry de, 170 
Montfort, Simon de, earl of 

Chester, 102, 168-170, 175 
Montfort, Simon de, 176, 185 
Montgomery (Trevaldwyn), 50, 

65, ^71, 177, 183, 202,213,327, 

364 
Montgomery, Arnulfof, 57, 69, 

116 
Montgomery, Hugh of, the Red, 

57,66, 119 
Montgomery, Roger of, 49, 50, 57 
Montgomeryshire, 313, 315, 329, 

363 
Morgan ap Caradoc, 95 
Morgan ap Howel, 157 
Morgan Llwyd o Wynedd, see 

Llwyd 
Morgan of Kidwelly, 300 
Morgan of Morgannwg, 212 
Morgan, Henry, buccaneer, 298 
Morgan, Thomas, of Pencarn, 

352 
Morgan, Col. ThomaSj 352 
Morgan, bp. William, translator 

of Bible, 345, 348-349 
Morgan, W., m. of Long Parlia- 
ment, 359, 367 
Morgannwg, 15. 35, 40, 50, 59, 70, 

73, 113, 136, 237, 278,313 ; sec 

Glamorganshire 
Morris, Edward, of Perthi 

Llwydion, 308 
Morris, Lewis, of Mon, 390 
Morris Stove, graduate, 271 
Morris, William, 403 
Mortimer, Anne, 151, 254, 285, 

291 



4i6 



INDEX 



Mortimer, Edmund, of Wig- 
more, d. 1304 ; 205, 210 

Mortimer, Edmund, 258, 276- 
277, 285 

Mortimer, Edmund, earl of 
March, 275, 277, 289 

Mortimer, Eleanor, w. of Hot- 
spur, 254 

Mortimer, Ralph, 134 

Mortimer, Roger, 94, 98, 102 

Mortimer, Roger, of Wigmore, 
d. 1282 ; 163, 168-170, 172, 
177, 178, 188, 234 

Mortimer, Roger, of Chirk ; d. 
1326 ; 204, 210, 224-225, 230- 
231 

Mortimer, Roger, d. 1330 ; first 
earl of March, 214-231, 233- 

234 
Mortimer, Roger, d. 1360 ; 239 
Mortimer, Roger, d. 1381 ; third 

earl of March, 254 
Mortimer, Roger, d. 1394 ; fourth 

earl of March, 254 
Morton, Cardinal, 295, 298 
Morvudd, 262 
Mostyn, 361 
Murtagh, of Ireland, 68 
Music, Welsh, loi, 296 
Myddvai, doctors of, 375 
Mytton, General Thomas, 300, 

367 

N 

Nannau, Sion Davydd Las, bard 

of, 381 
Nanteos, healing cup of, 346 
Narberth, ']'], 137, 317 
Neath (Castell Nedd), 59, 97, 114, 

202, 233, 259, 314, 346, 368 
Nest, d. of Rees ap Tudor, 70-72, 

76, 87, 116 
Nesta, w. of Bernard, no 
Nevin, 119, 208, 259 
Newborough (Rhosyr, Niw- 

bwrch), 202, 259 
Newcastle Emlyn (Castell New- 

ydd Emlyn), 167, 211, 317 
New Monarchy, 296 
Newport, Mon. (Casnew^^dd), 

202, 230, 259, 394, 400 



Newport, Pembrokeshire (Trev- 

draeth), 59, 164 
Newport, Salop, 300 
Newtown (Drevnewydd), 300 
Nicknames, 13 
Nonconformists, 345 
Normans, Norsemen, 17, 33, 67, 

44-60 
Northumberland, earl of, 325, 

326 
Northumbria, 32, 47 
North Wales, loi, 130, 210, 224, 

244, 258, 275, 282, 343, 361 
Nott, 403 

O 

Offa, 32 

Offa's dyke, 32, 318 

Ogmore, 314 

Oldcastle, Sir John, 304-305 

Olwen, 14, 262 

Ordericus Vitalig, 64 

Ordovices, 15, 23 

Ostorius Scapula, 19, 20 

Oswestry (Croesoswallt), 85, 89, 

213, 318, 319, 363 
Otto, Ottobon, legates, 154, 171 
Overstone, Lord, 403 
Owen ap Cadogan, 63, 71-78 
Owen ap Griffith ap Llywelyn, 

155, 159, 160, 178, 179, 189 
Owen ap Griffith ap Rees, 129, 

130, 141 
Owen ap Madoc, 99 
Owen Cyveiliog, 78, 89, 91, 98- 

100, 102, 122, 346 
Owen Glendower (Owen Glen- 

dwr), 151, 252, 268-287 
Owen Gwynedd, 74, 81-93, 

loo-ioi, 121 
Owen of Powys, sec Owen ap 

Cadogan 
Owen of Wales, the Yeuain de 

Galles of Froissart, probably 

Owen Lawgoch ap Thomas 

ap Rhodri ap Llywelyn the 

Great), 241, 242 
Owen, Baron, 334-335 
Owen, Goronwy, 390 
Owen, Hugh, of Orielton, 359 
Owen, Sir Hugh, 401 



INDEX 



4^7 



Owen, Sir John, of Clenenau, 

354, 373 
Owen, Morgan, bp. of Llandaff, 

375 
Owen, Robert, apostle of labour, 

403 
Oxford, 237, 325, 348, 355 



Pain of Turberville, 59, 228 

Pain's Castle, 102 

Parish system, council, 333, 336, 

400 
Parliament — 

English, 168, 170, 191,223, 224 

Welsh, 279, 282-283 

United, 304, 320, 347 

Long, 328, 345, 359 

Commonwealth, 376, 377 

British, 394, 397 
Patagonia, Welsh settlement in, 

404 
Parry, Bp., 349 
Patrick, Saint, horn of, 108 
Patrick de Sayes, 167, 178 
Payn Fitzjohn, 109, no 
Payn Fitz Patrick, 178 
Pembroke (Penvro), 57, 65, 70, 

116, 132, 137, 212, 296, 364, 

367-372 ; pigs of, 13 ; earldom 

oi,sce Clare, Marshall, Valence, 

Hastings, Edward V., Herbert 
Pembrokeshire, 299, 312, 314, 

318, 329,343,364, 376 
Pencader, 9, 41 
Peckham, Archbp., 183, 185-187, 

188, 283 
Pecock, Reginald, 267, 296 i 
Penllyn, 178, 197 
Penmaen Maw r, 187 
Pennal, 282 
Penry, John, 345-34^ 
Percies, 278, 285 ; sec Hotspur 
Peters, Hugh, 365, 371 
Philips, Col. James, 377 
Picton, 403 
Picton Castle, 364 
Picts, 27 

Plague, 27, 133, 285 
Plinlimmon, 5, 8, 14-17, 95, 143, 

163, 318 



Plough, praise of the, 308 
Porth Clais, 53 
Powel, Col. Rice, 369-371 
Powel, Vavasor, 379. 381 
Powys, 5, 8, 15, 24, 46; 56, 65, 68- 
78, 91, 92, 98-100, 102, 128, 

133 
Powys Castle, 205, 232, 313 
Poyer, Col. John, 368-372 
Poyntz, 367 

Presbvterianism, 367, 368 
Press,' 347, 367, 395 
Prestatyn, 91 

Presteign (Llanandras), 349, 367 
Price, C, of Mynachty, 359 
Price, Ellis, the *' red doctor," 

343 
Price, Herbert, of Brecon, 359 
Price, Sir John, of Newtown, 359 
Price, Richard, one of Nominees, 

377 
Price, William, of Rhiwlas, 359 
Prices, fluctuation of, 337 
Prichard, Hugh, Fifth Monarchy 

man, 379 
Prichard, Rees, the " Old Vicar," 

375-37^^, 3«i 
Priestholm (Yn^'s Seiriol), 119 
Primogeniture, 327, 335, 337 
Prince, principality, of Wales, 

171, 180, 218-219, 236-237. 255, 

279, 289, 291, 311,401,404 
Prophecies, influence of, 1 12-1 14, 

116, 188, 286 
Puleston, Sir Roger, 212 
Pwllheli, 259 



R 



Radnor (Maesyved), 59, 105, 107 
Radnorshire, 313, 315, 3-9, 377 
Raglan, 351, 359-36o, 367 
Ralph of Hereford, 42 
Ranulph I. (le Meschin), earl of 

Chester, 85 
Ranulph II. (de Gernons), 100 
Ranulph III. (Blundeville) 102 
Ranulph Poer, 97, 98 
Rebecca riots, 295 
Red Book of Hergest, 264 
Red Rose, see Lancastrians 



28 



4i8 



INDEX 



Red Owen (Owen Goch) sec 

O. ap Griffith 
Rees ab Owen (Rhys ab Owen), 

50 
Rees ap Griffith (Rhys ab 

Gruftydd), the Lord Rees, 87- 

103, 104, 107 
Rees ap Griffith ap Rees, 141 
Rees ap Griffith ap Rees ap 

Thomas, 322 
Rees ap Maelgwn, 183, 188 
Rees ap Meredith, or Vychan 

(Rhys ab Meredydd), i8i, 182, 

191, 207, 2IO-2II 

Rees ap Thomas, 299-301, 306, 

307,309, 3H, 322, 323 
Rees ap Tudor (Rhys ab 

Tewdwr), 53-56, 59, 76 
Rees Gethin, 270 
Rees Goch (Rhys Goch ap 

Rhicert), 263 
Rees Mechyll, 167 
Rees the Hoarse (Rhys Grug), 

126, 129, 131, 133, 13(^-138, 140 
Rees the Little (Rhys Vychan), 

163, 164, 167. 172 
Reform Acts, 395 
Reformation, 340-353, 355 
Revolution, Puritan, 340-355, 

373, 378 ; French, 340, 387 
Rhaiadr, river, 313 
Rhaiadr, town, 94, 98, 325 
Rhagvel, sea-king's d., 51 
Rhivvallon ap Cynvyn, 43 
Rhodrithe Great (Khodri Mawr), 

34-35 
Rhodri Molwynog, 32 
Rhondda, 7 
Rhos, cantrev, 161 
Rhos Llanerch Rugog, 7 
Rhuddlan, 42, 50, 51, 86, 88, 91, 

93, 121, 129, i77-i8i, 184, 187, 

188-193, 202 
Rhun ab Owen Gwynedd, 85 
Rhuvoniog, 161, 180 
Rhyd y Gors, 65 
Rhymney, Rumney (Rhymiii). 

50, 313 
Richard I., 96 
Richard II., 275, 277, 285 
Richard III., 297-301 



Richard, bp. of Bangor, 154, 168, 

171 
Richard, brother of Henry III., 

king of Romans, 154, 161, 165, 

176 
Richard, duke of York, 291, 292 
Richard ot Granville, 59 
Richards, Judge, 333 
Richmond, earl of, see Henry 

VII, 
Robert Fitz Stephen, 87, 91, 94 
Robert Fitz Hamon 
Robert of Gloucester, 97, 100 
Robert of Malpas, 48 
Robert of Rhuddlan, 48-53, 55, 

64,65 
Robert St. Quentin, 59 
Robert Vipont, 130 
Roger of Chester, 67, 70, 73, 78 
Roger of Montaut, 155 
Rome, 18 ; influence of, 24-27, 

341, 3.52 
Roses, Vale of, 117 
Round Table, 208 
Rupert of the Rhine, 361, 365 
Ruthin (Rhuthyn), i6i, 270, 349- 

350, 357 ; cats of, 13 ; lords of , 
cc Grey 
Ruthyn, Glamorgan, 314 



St. Asaph, 121, 284 ; diocese of, 17 
St. Clears, 278 

St. David's, 40, 41, 52-55, 57, 65, 
102, 107, 117, 118, 140, 209, 
283-284, 341, 345 ; diocese of, 
17, 106, 114, 244, 340-343; 
supposed metropolitan see of, 
126 
St. Dogmels, 55, 117 
St. Harmon, 107 
St. Winifred's Well, 350 
Salesbury, William, 343, 349 
Salisbury, John, of Flint, 359 
Sampson, bp. of Lichfield, 323 
Savaddan, lake, 13, 109, 387 
Saxons, 17, 26, 28-30 
Schools, grammar, 342, 349-350, 
381 ; circulating, 3«7-38.s ; 
Sunday, 390 ; elementary, 
400 ; intermediate, 401 



INDEX 



419 



Scotland, 142, 162, 172, 180, 206, 

211, 216, 217, 276, 372, 397 
Scuddamore, John, castellan, 

277 
Seiont, river, 201, 208 
Seisyll of Dyvnwal, 95, 97 
Senena, 155 

Senghenydd, 59, 132, 227 
Sessions, Great, 329-337 ; Petty, 

331 ; Quarter, 333 
Severn (Havren), 3, 5, 7, 17, 19, 

29, 32, 41, 48, 73-74, 253, 298, 

300, 321 
Shakespere, on Welsh history, 

287, 303, 328 
Sheriff, 333 
Shire system, 195-198, 311-320, 

333 
Shrewsbury (Amwythig), 5, 32, 

46, 48-49, 66-68, 122, 128, 139, 

155, 171, 173, 191, 274, 278, 

300, 319, 360 
Shropshire, 275, 298, 318, 323 
Sidney, Algernon, 332, 378, 381 
Sidney, Sir Henry, 326-329 
Sidney, Mary, 328 
Sidney, Philip, 328 
Silures, 12, 15, 19-23 
Smythe, William, bp., 325 
Snovvdon (Y Wyddva), 3-8, 17, 

33,52,65,86,89, 121, 159, 178, 

180, 185, 188, 194, 196, 271 ; 

Lady of, see Eleanor de 

Montford ; lords of, 179 ; 

see Justice of 
South Wales, South (Y Dehev- 

dir), 32, 37, Qi, 94-9^, loi, 102, 

116, 129-133, 168, 178, 180, 

188, 195, 2[o, 224, 244, 272, 

277, 282, 300, 379 
Stanleys, the, 300, 301 
Star Chamber, 302-304 
Statutum Waliiae (Statute of 

Rhuddlan), 193-198, 233 
Stepney, Sir J., 359 
Stradling, Sir E., 359, 379 
Strata Florida (Ystrad Fflur), 31, 

102, 118, 140, 143, 172, 175, 

212, 214, 274, 284, 346 
Strata Marcella (Ystrad Mar- 

chell), 264, 343, 346 



Strathclyde (Ystrad Clwyd), 29 
Strongbow, Richard de Clare, 

94, 96 
Suetonius Paulinus, 21 
Swansea (Abertawe), 77, 144, 

259, 400 
Sybil of Montgomery, w. of 

Fitz Hamon, 57, 60 
Sybil, w. of Milo of Gloucester, 

no 
Sycharth, 270, 277, 285 



Tacitus, 23 

Taffy (Davydd), 384 

Talbots, the, 298, 300 

Talgarth, 55, 387 

Tal y Llychau, 172 

Tawe, river, 136 

Taxation, 223, 320 

Tegeingl, see Englfield 

Teivy, river, 81, 91, 117, 300 

Tenby (Dinbych y Pysgod), 364 

Teutons, 17, 26 

Thelwall, Simon, 359 

Thomas of Lancaster, 226, 231 

Thomas, Morgan, Yorkist, 296 

Thomas, David, Lancastrian, 

296 
Thomas, William, of Aber, 359 
Tibetot, Robert de, 210 
Tintern, 137, 314, 346 
Tithes, 346 
Titus, 18 

Tostig, S3n of Godwin, 43 
Totems, 13 
Tower of London, 189, 192, 214, 

216, 218, 297-298 
Towns, rise of, 201, 202, 258, 

332 
Towy (Tywi), river, 6, 317 
Towy, Vale of (Ystrad Tywi), 

7, 8, 35, 41, 50, 76-79, 87, 93, 

181, 211, 278 
Towyn, 118 
Trahaiarn, 50-54 
Trahaiarn Vychan, 103 
Trallwm, see Welshpool 
Treaty, see Montgomery, 

Rhuddlan 



420 



INDEX 



Tregaron, 315 

Tretower, Yorkist, 298 

Trevecca, 387 

Trevor, bp. John, 279, 285 

Triads, 305, 307-309, 323 

Tuberville, Sir Thomas, 215- 

216 
Tudors, popularity of, 340 ; sec 
Henry VII., Henry VIII., 
Mary, Elizabeth 
Tudor, Arthur, 311 
Tudor, Edmund, 292, 341 
Tudor, Jasper, 292, 294, 295, 299 
Tudor, Margaret (Lady Mar- 
garet Beaufort), 292 
Tudor, Owen, 292 
Tudur Aled, 238, 267, 305, 307, 
09, 3 o 

U 

United States of America, 404 
University, movement for, 271, 

282, 284-285, 381, 400, 401 
Uriconium, 19, 29 
Usk (Wysg), river, 5, 293 
Usk (Brynbuga), 112, 202, 352, 

364 



V 



Valence, Aylmer de, 207 
Valence, William de, earl of 

Pembroke, 206 
Valle Crucis, 172, 269, 286, 305, 

346 
Van Lake (Llyn y Van), 13 
Vaughan (Vychan), Griffith, of 

Caio, 274 
Vaughan, Roger, Yorkist, 296 
Vaughan, Henry, of Derwydd, 

359 ^., . , 

Vaughan, Henry, the Silurist, 

376, 381 
Vaughan, Rowland, of Caergai, 

387 
Vaughan, Thomas, Yorkist, 297 
Vaus, John de, 191 
Veranius, 20 
Vespasian, 18, 23 
Voysey, John, 325 



Wages, changes in, 242, 243 

Wales (Cymru), 3, 147 

Welsh character, 10, 124, 188, 

192, 342, 384, 400 
Welsh language, 112, 115, 202, 

304, 311, 319, 334-337, 348- 

350 
Welshmen's Candle (Canwyll y 

Cymry), 376, 381 
Welshpool (Trallwm), 73, 164, 

202, 232, 253, 274, 300, 334 
Wenlock, 122 
Wessex, 34-43, 47 
White Rose, see York 
White Ship, the, 67, 78, 100 
Whitgift, Archbp., 348, 349 
Whitland (Hen Dy Gwyn), 115, 

172, 346 
Wigmore, 205, 318, 327 
William I., 4s 
William II., 65-67, 117 
William Fitz Martin, 94 
William Fitz Osbern, 49-50, 59 
William of Gloucester, 97, 103 
William of London, 59, 77 
Williams, John, archbp. of 

York, 354-356, 363, 367 
Williams, John, one of Nomi- 
nees, 377 
Williams, Judge, 378 
Williams, Lord, of Thame, 326 
Williams, Roger, 352-3 
Williams, Sir Trevor, 371 
Williams, WilUam, Pant y Celyn, 

389-390 
Wilson, Richard, painter, 403 
Windsor, 104 
Wogan, Thomas, 373 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 322, 343 
Worcester (Caer Wrangon), 32, 
65, 180, 231, 274 ; Marquis of, 
360 
Worcestershire, 323 
Wrexham, 361 
Wye (Wy), river, 5, 6, 32, 50, 

108, 169 
Wynnes, Wynns, the, 320 
Wynn, Ellis, Glasynys, 38 
Wynn, John, 241 



INDEX 



42 



Wynn, John, of Gwydir, 334 
Wynn, Sir John, of Gwydir, 335, 
349 

Y 

Yeuvain de Galles, see Owen of 
Wales 



York, 211 ; House of, 285, 293, 

294 
Ystrad Marchell, see Strata 

Marcella 
Ystrad Meurig, 400 
Ystrad Towy, sec Vale of 

Towy 



The Story of the Nations. 



Messrs. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS take pleasure in 
announcing that they have in course of publication, in 
co-operation with Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, of London, a 
series of historical studies, intended to present in a graphic 
manner the stories of the different nations that have 
attained prominence in history. 

In the story form the current of each national life is 
distinctly indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy 
periods and episodes are presented for the reader in their 
philosophical relation to each other as well as to universal 
history. 

It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to 
enter into the real life of the peoples, and to bring them 
before the reader as they actually lived, labored, and 
struggled— as they studied and wrote, and as they amused 
themselves. In carrying out this plan, the myths, with 
which the history of all lands begins, will not be over- 
looked, though these will be carefully distinguished from 
the actual history, so far as the labors of the accepted 
historical authorities have resulted in definite conclusions. 

The subjects of the different volumes have been planned 
to cover connecting and, as far as possible, consecutive 
epochs or periods, so that the set when completed will 
present in a comprehensive narrative the chief events in 
the great Story of the Nations; but it is, of course, 
not alwayc practicable to issue the several volumes in 
their chronological order- 



THE STORY OF THE NATIONS. 



GREECE. Prof. Jas. A. Harrison. 
ROME. Arthur Gilman. 
THE JEWS. Prof. James K. Hosmer. 
CHALDEA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
GERMANY. S. Baring-Gould, 
NORWAY. Hjalmar H, Boyesen. 
SPAIN. Rev. E. E. and Susan Hale. 
HUNGARY. Prof. A. Vimbery. 
CARTHAGE. Prof. Alfred J. Church. 
THE SARACENS. Arthur Oilman. 
THE MOORS IN SPAIN, Stanley 

Lane-Poole. 
THE NORMANS. Sarah Ornejewett. 
PERSIA. S. G. W. Benjamin. 
ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. Geo. Raw- 

linson. 
V ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. J. 

P. Mahaffy. 
ASSYRIA. Z. A. Ragozin, 
THE GOTHS. Henry Bradley. 
IRELAND. Hon. Emily Lawless. 
TURKEY. Stanley Lane-Poole. 
MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. 

Z. A. Ragozin. 
MEDIEVAL FRANCE, Prof. Gus- 

tave Masson. 
HOLLAND. Prof. J. Thorold Rogers. 
MEXICO. Susan Hale. 
PHCENICIA. Geo. Rawlinson, 
THE HANSA TOWNS. Helen Zim- 

mern. 
EARLY BRITAIN. Prof. Alfred J. 

Church. 
THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. Stan- 
ley Lane-Poole. 
RUSSIA. W. R. Morfill. 
THE JEWSUNDERROME. W. D. 

Morrison. 
SCOTLAND. John Mackintosh. 
SW^ITZERLAND. R. Stead and Mrs. 

A. Hug. 
PORTUGAL. H. Morse-Stephens, 
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. C. W. 

C. Oman. 
SICILY. E. A. Freeman. 
THE TUSCAN REPUBLICS. Bella 

Duffy. 
POLAND. W. R. Morfill. 
PARTHIA. Geo. Rawlinson, 
JAPAN, David Murray. 



THE CHRISTIAN RECOVERY OF 

SPAIN. H.E. Watts. 
AUSTRALASIA. Greville Tregar- 

then 
SOUTHERN AFRICA. Geo. M. 

THEAL. 
VENICE. AletheaWiel. 
THE CRUSADES. T. S. Archer and 

C. L. Kingsford. 
VEDIC INDIA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
BOHEMIA. C. E. Maurice. 
CANADA. J. G. Bourinot. 
THE BALKAN STATES. William 

Miller. 
BRITISH RULE IN INDIA, R, W^. 

Frazer. 
MODERN FRANCE. Andre Le Bon. 
THE BUILDING OF THE BRITISH 

EMPIRE. Alfred T. Story, Two 

vols. 
THE FRANKS. Lewis Sargeant. 
THE WEST INDIES, Amos K. 

Fiske. 
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND IN 

THE 19TH CENTURY. Justin 

McCarthy, M.P. Two vols. 
AUSTRIA, THE HOME OF THE 

HAPSBURG DYNASTY, FROM 

1282 TO THE PRESENT DAY. 

Sidney W^hitman, 
CHINA. Robt. K. Douglass. 
MODERN SPAIN. Major Martin A. 

S. Hume. 
MODERN ITALY. Pietro Orsi. 
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. 

Helen A. Smith. Two vols. 
WALES AND CORNWALL. Owen 

M. Edwrads. Net $1.35. 
MEDIiEVAL ROME. By William 

Miller. Net $1.35. 

Other volumes in preparation are : 

THE UNITED STATES, 1775-1897. 

Prof. E. E. Sparks. Two vols. 
BUDDHIST INDIA. Prof. T, W. 

Rhys-Davids. 
MOHAMMEDAN INDIA. Stanley 

Lane-Poole. 



Heroes of the Nations. 



EDITED BY 



EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., 

Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, 



A Series of biographical studies of the lives and work 
of a number of representative historical characters about 
whom have gathered the great traditions of the Nations 
to which they belonged, and who have been accepted, in 
many instances, as types of the several National ideals. 
With the life of each typical character will be presented 
a picture of the National conditions surrounding him 
during his career. 

The narratives are the work of writers who are recog- 
nized authorities on their several subjects, and, while 
thoroughly trustworthy as history, will present picturesque 
and dramatic "stories'* of the Men and of the events con- 
nected with them. 

To the Life of each ** Hero " will be given one dou- 
decimo volume, handsomely printed in large type, pro- 
vided with maps and adequately illustrated according to 
the special requirements of the several subjects. The 
volumes will be sold separately as follows: 



HEROES OF THE NATIONS. 

A series of biographical studies of the lives and work of 
certain representative historical characters, about whom have 
gathered the great traditions of the Nations to which they 
belonged, and who have been accepted, in many instances, as 
types of the several National ideals. 

The volumes will be sold separately as follows : cloth extra, 
$1.50 ; half leather, uncut edges, gilt top, $1.75. 

The following are now ready : 



y 



NELSON. By W.Clark Russell. 
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. By C. 

R. L. Fletcher, 
PERICLES. By Evelyn Abbott. 
THEODORIC THE GOTH. By 

Thomas Hodgkin. 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. By H. R. 

Fox-Bourne. 
3ULIUS CiESAR. By W. Warde 

Fowler. 
WYCLIF. By Lewis Sergeant. 
NAPOLEON. By W. O'Connor Mor- 
ris. 
HENRY OF NAVARRE. By P. F. 

Willert. 
CICERO. By J. L. Strachan-David- 

son. 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By Noah 

Brooks. 
PRINCE HENRY (OF PORTUGAL) 

THE NAVIGATOR. By C. R. 

Beazley. 
JULIAN THE PHILOSOPHER. By 

Alice Gardner. 
LOUIS XIV. By Arthur Hassall. 
CHARLES XII. By R. Nisbet Bain. 
LORENZO DE' MEDICI. By Ed- 
ward Armstrong. 
JEANNE D'ARC. By Mrs. Oliphant. 
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. By 

\A^ashington Irving. 



ROBERT THE BRUCE. By Sir 
Herbert Maxwell. 

HANNIBAL. By W. O'Connor Mor- 
ris. 

ULYSSES S. GRANT. By William 
Conant Church. 

ROBERT E. LEE. By Henry Alex- 
ander W^hite. 

THE CID CAMPEADOR. By H. 
Butler Clarke. 

SALADIN. By Stanley Lane-Poole. 

BISMARCK. By J. W. Headlam. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By 
Benjamin I. W^heeler. 

CHARLEMAGNE. By H. W. C. 
Davis. 

OLIVER CROMWELL. By Charles 
Firth. 

RICHELIEU. By James B. Perkins. 

DANIEL O'CONNELL. By Robert 
Dunlop. 

SAINT LOUIS (Louis IX. of France). 
By Frederick Perry. 

LORD CHATHAM. By Walford 
Davis Green. 

OWEN GLYNDAVR. By Arthur G. 
Bradley. $1.35 net. 

HENRY V. By Charles L. Kings- 
ford. $1.35 net. 

EDW^ARD I. By Edward Jenka. 
$1.35 net. 



Other volumes in preparation are 



MOLTKE. By Spencer Wilkinson. 
JUDAS MACCAB.ffiUS. By Israel 

Abrahams. 
SOBIESKI. By F. A. Pollard. 
ALFRED THE TRUTHTELLER. 

By Frederick Perry. 
FREDERICK II, By A. I*. Smith. 



By C. W. C. 



MARLBOROUGH. 

Oman. 
RICHARD THE LION-HEARTED. 

By T. A. Archer. 
WILLIAM THE SILENT. By Ruth 

Putnam. 



G. P. PUTNAM S SONS, Publishers New York and London 






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